


Blossoms and Bouquets

by galpalaven



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Drabble Collection, F/F, F/M, Please give it a shot, Prompt Fill, Shepard Cousins, These Are All Canon, chapters are neatly labeled with each character/pair its about, in my little au anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-04 13:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 30,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11556045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galpalaven/pseuds/galpalaven
Summary: A series of snapshots into the world of Commander Sun Shepard (and, by extension, Lieutenant-Commander Kira Shepard) through the eyes of her companions, prompted by flower meanings.





	1. Buttercup: Gardner

**Author's Note:**

> [These](http://galpalaven.tumblr.com/post/163158439988/flowers-and-prompts) are the prompts these are based on. Feel free to send more!
> 
> Buttercup - _Ingratitude_

He knew, on some level, that his presence would go mostly unappreciated. That the crew—like the crew of every ship he’d ever served on, truth be told—would come and go, would eat his food and poke jabs at his cooking, but then go right back to forgetting he ever existed. 

And that was fine, really.

He didn’t mind the quiet, didn’t mind getting left alone. Almost preferred it to some of those yahoos and their constant bitching about his cooking, truthfully. And it wasn’t like he was the only crew member that got overlooked most days—Dr. Chakwas rarely ventured outside of the med bay (was always open to having him visit, though, at least). Joker rarely left the bridge—but then again, he was flying the ship.

Sometimes he tried to do something nice, though—to make dinner a little better, to make something special—but it rarely went over well. Even when he was sure it  _didn’t_  taste terrible, it was a running gag now to make fun of his cooking no matter what. It didn’t make him angry, but it did sting. A little appreciation here and there would be  _nice_ , you know? Just a little.

And then Shepard recruited Kasumi and that other Shepard, and something shifted, at least a little. 

Kasumi liked his ramen, that he made for her the first night she was aboard the Normandy. The other Shepard—Kira, was it?—showed up barely a few minutes later, said she smelled it on her way to the rec room and wondered if there was any left.

And then the Commander herself wandered in, smiling and mumbling something about not having had ramen in so  _long_  and  _“Gardner, why didn’t you tell me you had the stuff for this?”_  as she curled into a seat at the table with her own bowl.

He watched them for a bit, giggling over their noodles and talking about toppings, talking about buying some chopsticks next time they were on the Citadel, and it made him smile a little. At least  _someone—_

“Gardner,” said the other Shepard suddenly, turning around in her seat to look at him. “Why don’t you come sit with us?”

“Yeah,” the Commander echoed. “Come sit. You’ve been cooking all day, probably. We don’t bite.”

“Much,” added Kasumi, and from under her hood he could see she was smirking.

Well. Maybe this crew wasn’t  _exactly_  like every other crew he’d served with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gardner works hard and three, Asian, ramen-loving girls are the only ones who appreciate him at the end of the day


	2. Raspberry: Zaeed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raspberry - _Remorse_

Obviously, the state of Commander Shepard was not  _his_  doing. 

It wasn’t his fault she’d gone charging straight into a Reaper beam, wasn’t his fault something had gone horribly wrong up there on the Crucible that left her in pieces. Definitely wasn’t his fault that the Normandy was still nowhere to be found, so on top of everyone agonizing over her, they were also agonizing over  _them_.

None of that was his fault. He’d been on another side of the battlefield, sniping Marauders and doing his part. He’d just been doing what he knew how to do.

But damn, if it still didn’t hurt.

He didn’t visit the Commander very often. Thought the hospital staff might find it weird and run him off.  _Knew_  that the Lieutenant-Commander, her cousin who had actually turned out to be a big goddamn hero after all  ~~(had already been a big goddamn hero, actually, just forgotten in the shadows compared to _Shepard,_ he reminded himself)~~ would think it was weird. She’d become something of Shepard’s body guard, sitting in with her nearly round the clock, unless she was desperately needed elsewhere. Catching a moment to be alone with Shepard was hard enough as it was–he didn’t need to be answering any sappy questions while he was there.

It was strange, the first time he saw her. Half of her face had been covered with bloody bandages, her skin pale, a breathing tube shoved down her throat. The only thing that confirmed that there was still life somewhere in there was the beeping of the heart monitor by her bed.

Zaeed wasn’t used to feeling this way. Wasn’t used to caring about anyone enough to worry like this, but here he was. It was pathetic, really.

He watched her breathe for a while, sighing and leaned forward to brace his elbows on his knees. 

“Hey,” he said softly, remembering what someone had once told him about people in comas. “I know I’m probably not the person you wanna hear from. I wouldn’t want to hear from me neither.” He paused to huff out a dry laugh. “But, you gotta pull through this, you hear me? You’re a hero—a real one. The galaxy needs a hero, not a martyr. This war gave us plenty of  _them_.”

He paused, looking down at his fingers to stop looking at the broken body of Commander Shepard on the cot. It was starting to pull a knot in his throat and he hated that.

“You’re a stubborn person, Shepard. A beautiful, bullheaded, stubborn woman, but you can’t end here. Not with—not with people still counting on you. When Garrus gets back—” _if Garrus gets back_ , he thought to himself. “When he gets back, he’s gonna want to see you. Everyone wants to see you. So if you see any lights in there, you make sure you walk the other direction, alright? Or I’m coming in after you, got it?”

He paused, almost waiting for her to laugh and say, “ _Yeah, alright, old man_ ,” like she always did, but…

But Commander Shepard didn’t move, and his heart sank a little lower.

_No more visits_ , he told himself on the way out.  _I’ll just send flowers until—_

Zaeed didn’t let himself finish that thought as he left her hospital room, just barely making eye contact with a puffy-eyed, exhausted Kira as he passed. She smiled at him a little, but he didn’t smile back.

All that was left now was a waiting game, and he hated waiting. He wondered where the closest, mostly in-tact liquor store was, and how many military dogs would get mad at him for making a makeshift shooting range of the the husk corpses still scattered around London.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zaeed is one of those characters where I can just _hear_ his voice when I write him can you tell


	3. Holly: Space Hamster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holly - _Foresight_

Wicket may have been just a hamster, but he liked to think himself at least an  _intelligent_  hamster. 

When the lady who looked like his friend came in and started poking around the room, like she was looking for something, he could tell something was off. Especially when she came up to him and tilted her head and  _didn’t_  smile, even though she reached in a finger to pet him anyway.

It was probably not the smartest move, in hindsight, to have bitten her so hard that he tasted blood, but really, something was  _wrong._

The person with his friend’s face hissed, started making a lot of agitated noises that he was sure meant she was angry, and he was still sure that she  _wasn’t his friend_. No way. Something was  _wrong._

And then she started cleaning out the bedroom, taking things that belonged to his friend—personal things, things she loved, and packing them away to be thrown out. Including him.

There was a moment—however brief and fleeting—while he was sitting in front of the elevator downstairs and watching all these masked creatures walk around that he thought maybe this really was it. Maybe something had happened. Maybe this was his end.

But then someone else had showed up—someone else with his friend’s face that he was wary of at first, at least until he noticed the big friend that his friend seemed to like a lot. The one with the teeth was someone she never went anywhere without, he was sure, somehow, so this must be her. This must be her, so who was—?

“Alright,” sighed his friend, his  _real_  friend, reaching in to scratch his ear the way he liked it. “Sit tight, little guy. Anybody gives you trouble… _go for the eyes_.”

He couldn’t speak, of course, but he hoped that she understood that this particular squeak meant, “ _Roger, Commander.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_( ─‿‿─ )_/¯


	4. Marigolds: Before Cerberus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before Shepard was brought back to life by Cerberus, there was a funeral.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> blame my friends for sending me this tumblr prompt
> 
> "Hey. Hey, guess what. You're gonna hate me. Marigold (grief), any character, but timeframe of around Sun's funeral before Cerberus brings her back."

Joker was the last to see her alive, the last to hear her voice. 

She was so close to making it onto the escape pod, so close to  _safety_  and then—and then she’d fallen backwards and the doors had closed and that was it. 

That was  _it_. 

He was sure the escape pod itself made a lot of noise as it escaped the burning pile of space garbage that had been the Normandy, but through the rushing in his ears and numb sense of horror making his brain go all fuzzy, he couldn’t remember any. He remembered the sight of her pressing the button, and the  _swoosh_  and  _latch_  of the closed door, but after that…

He almost considered not coming to the ceremony. No, not almost—he  _really_ considered not coming to the ceremony. Going to the funeral of a friend is one thing, but the funeral of a friend  _you_  got killed?

Some things are too much, even for him.

But, it wasn’t like he’d have to look at her probably charred or…hideously deformed body or anything. They never found her body. They never found  _anything_. In fact, they didn’t even go back for the Normandy  _at all_. 

So the whole thing is just pomp and circumstance, really. 

Commander Sun Shepard is  _technically_  listed as Missing In Action, not Killed In Action. They have no proof that she’s dead, so this funeral—and the candlelight vigil, and the tiny monuments of flowers and stuffed animals and thank you letters popping up  _everywhere_ —it’s all just for show. 

But it still fucking hurts, and he still doesn’t want to look at anyone today, least of which the surviving crew members that do, actually, turn up to pay their respects.

He feels too guilty for anything else, he thinks as he slouches in his seat closest to a corner that he can find.

 

* * *

 

Wrex was already on Tuchanka when he heard about Shepard’s fate.

He wasn’t really sure how to process it, at first. Shepard was a good friend, a great leader. She convinced him to return to his people, saved the galaxy from an invasion that could have destroyed them all. She had more of an impact on his life than anyone had in years.

But he’s old. 

He’s old and this isn’t the first time he’s lost a friend, nor will it be the last. So he let himself grieve, let himself mourn, and forced himself to move on, burying his head in his work.

It’s what Shepard would want, after all.

He still sends an anonymous bouquet of flowers to the ceremony on the Citadel.

 

* * *

 

Kaidan knows that this is a mistake from the very start, from the second he steps into the—the banquet hall, he guesses.

He’s always hated funerals, especially for people he cares about. Beyond the overwhelming scent of flowers and the people trying to cheer you up, it was usually the heaviness of the entire affair that made him a little stir-crazy if it lasted too long.

His dress blues have never felt so uncomfortable, so claustrophobic, and he’s pretty sure he’s getting a migraine as he takes in the crowd of people in attendance. There’d been a crowd outside, but the inner banquet hall is for “Friends and Loved Ones of the Deceased”—a sign that he wants to break in half with his bare hands—so the actual room is relatively open and sparse.

The flowers he’d picked up on the way—hibiscus flowers that reminded him of the little bonzai she’d kept in her quarters on the Normandy—are crinkled and falling apart now, he’s been clutching the bouquet so tight.

There’s a picture of her where the other flowers are placed, and his heart squeezes painfully in his chest. She’s younger than when he’d known her—fresh-faced and bright-eyed, smiling out at him from the canvas.

 _Missing In Action_ , they’d called her. 

How weird to have a funeral for someone you’re not entirely sure is dead.

 

* * *

 

Tali cried, when word reached the Flotilla. 

She cried hard and loud and so much that she ended up just taking off her mask and burying her face in a pillow, uncaring of what allergic reaction she might get. That was her  _best friend_  out there and she was—?

_Just like that?_

She was inconsolable for at least a day and half, alternating between outright sobbing and wondering what could have been different if she’d just  _stayed_  a little longer. Her father once countered that with, “ _You could have died, too,_ ” to which all she’d had to say (or, sob) was, “ _So?_ ”

She’s asked for special leave from the Fleet to be here today, but she’s already starting to regret it. It’s times like these you want to see your friends, of course, but…seeing some of them again…

She’s not sure what to do, hovering awkwardly by the entrance. Maybe if she stands here long enough, someone will tell her what to do.

Maybe if she stands here long enough, she’ll wake up and find out it’s all just been a very bad dream.

 

* * *

 

Garrus still can’t feel his fingers.

He knew, the moment— _the second_ —it happened, and there’s not a doubt in his mind that she’s not  _missing_. She’s dead. 

She’s  _dead_.

He’d had his visor hooked up to her vitals in the field, for tactical purposes he told himself, but really it was just because he worried. She was so fleshy and soft and  _tiny_ —even with Garrus and Wrex at her side, that didn’t necessarily make her an even match for every merc or monster the galaxy threw her way.

He wants to laugh at that thought, almost. It certainly didn’t make her a match for an alien warship with a giant laser and the vacuum of space.

But he isn’t a child. 

Garrus isn’t a child and turians raise their children differently than other races anyway. He’s known about death for his entire life. It’s just—part of life. He’s lost friends before—good friends. Great friends. Family.

It’s never hurt like this. 

He doesn’t try to socialize with people as he looks for a seat, dressed in his nicest uniform and with a rock in his chest where his heart should be. He wanders the room for a bit, taking in the flowers and notes and things with empty eyes, until his eyes fall on a pair of turians in the front of the room. 

It’s probably just because they’re turians that he notices them, realizing that he should probably be the only turian here. They’re in front of the life sized holo of Shepard in the front of the room. One is on her knees, nearly curled entirely in on herself, and the other is knelt beside her, arms around her shoulders. As he drifts closer, he hears what she’s crying.

_“Not again, Lia, not again. Please, not again!”_

Garrus doesn’t know their relation to Shepard, but he doesn’t want to interrupt either. Across the room, he catches sight of Tali, and sighs. Maybe a little familiarity won’t hurt so much after all.

 

* * *

 

Ashley hasn’t been this nervous since her first day of boot camp, she thinks anxiously as her eyes scan the crowd. 

The room isn’t as full as it could be, but she knows when the ceremony begins, it will be broadcasted at least around the Citadel, if not off the station as well. Her plans to honor her friend get shakier by the moment as she second-guesses herself with every breath.

She’s just caught sight of Kaidan, and planned to make a beeline to him to distract herself until it was time for her to speak, when she catches it: 

“ _Shepard!_ ”

Her breath catches in her throat so hard it hurts, and she whips around on the spot, only to find Captain Anderson talking to two women a few feet away. 

“Ah,” says the older one, “if you could  _not_  call me that today, David, that would be—”

“Right, right, of course. Sorry,” replies Anderson. “How are you both?”

“We didn’t know her well at all,” she says. “My own niece and the last time I spoke to her she was 15 years old, with blue hair and a nose ring. I feel like I don’t belong here.”

Ashley moves away, then, not caring about the rest of the conversation. It hadn’t occurred to her that Shepard had relatives—she’d never spoken of them, anyway. She said her family had all died on Mindoir, hadn’t she? But estranged family wouldn’t count, she supposes.

She's about to reach Kaidan when she hears someone call for her.

"Ash?"

When she turns, she finds a familiar face smiling at her, tired and sad but smiling, standing next to the woman speaking to Captain Anderson. Ashley feels a tiny bit of tension seep from her shoulders at the sight of another familiar face—well, at least one that doesn't remind her of the past year or so. She pulls Kira into a hug, laughing (thickly, already fighting off tears before the ceremony has even started) and Kira buries her face in her shoulder, sighing as she wraps her arms around her waist and squeezes.

"What are you doing here, kiddo?"

Kira snorts half-heartedly into Ashley's shirt at the nickname. "Sun was my cousin."

Oh.

Well, that made sense, didn't it? They were both  _Shepards_ weren't they? Of course they were related. Why didn't that cross her mind sooner?

"Huh," is all she ends up actually saying, and Kira laughs as she pulls away.

"It's okay," she says dryly. "We weren't close. She wouldn't have mentioned me."

"And you didn't mention her."

Kira shakes her head, looking out over the room and grabbing at her elbow distractedly. "No. But, she wasn't a big deal at the same time  _I_ was a big deal, so it didn't really cross my mind to bring her up." She sighs softly, and slouches a little more, and Ashley sees something of the 17-year-old they'd dragged into the barracks after Elysium. They'd been talking her ear off, about the benefits of the Alliance and how much she could do and how far she could go, but all 18-year-old Ashley had seen was a kid—a kid that reminded her of her kid sisters. 

A kid in way over her head. 

"Wish I'd made an effort now," Kira adds, smiling again now, but it's still an empty smile. "All that wasted time. Did you know she got me into the N7 program?"

Ashley raises her eyebrows, but that honestly doesn't surprise her. Shepard was kind like that. "Did she?"

"It was an anonymous letter," Kira says hesitantly, "but I'm pretty sure it was her. Seems like something she'd do, anyway, from what I've—what I've read."

"...hey, kiddo."

"Yeah?"

Ashley doesn't say anything else, just pulls Kira back into her arms. Kira hugs her right back, but they don't say anything. They don't need to, as long as they've known each other now. 

And she just—needs a minute. That’s all.

Just another minute.

 

* * *

 

Karin Chakwas has been to her share of funerals in her day, but this one has to be both the biggest and the worst.

She doesn’t linger around the pictures of the Commander for long, instead looking around the room, at the people who have come to be here for Shepard. She smiles at the familiar faces, and wonders if Shepard is happy that they’re here too, even as unhappy as they are. She knows she would be happy, if it were her looking down at the sight.

Especially the fiasco outside, she thinks. Hundreds of people paying their respects to the Hero of the Citadel, Commander Shepard, first human Spectre. People of all kinds had been lined up outside the hall to hear the speeches and to leave gifts. It’s an outpouring of support she’s not sure she’s ever seen.

She hopes Shepard feels loved, wherever she is. She hopes she’s proud of the impact she’s made, and the sheer number of lives she touched in such a short amount of time.

Chakwas settles into the chair beside Jeff (who barely even acknowledges her presence) with a heavy sigh. This event may be about love, but it’s also about love lost.

Her chest hurts every time she catches sight of Commander Shepard’s smiling face, and tries to remind herself that the Commander wouldn’t want her to be sad. She’d want this to be as painless as possible.

She’d want them to try to be happy.

 

* * *

 

Liara slips into the ceremony just as it’s begun, finding herself a seat in the farthest back corner to sit and listen.

Asari are used to funerals—when you outlive the most of the other species in the galaxy by several hundred years, it just becomes part of your life. It just is. But Liara has done her mourning, and now there are whispers that have her second-guessing—well, everything. 

She’d been one of the last to see Shepard that day. She’d been there when Shepard said she was going after Joker, and that was the last she’d seen of her. 

That wasn’t however, the last she’d heard of her. 

She couldn’t tell anyone why, or how, but something began to itch at the back of Liara’s mind after the crash. After she’d done her crying (hours and hours into her pillow, replaying the last moments over and over, trying to find something she could have done that could have  _stopped this_ ), she’d let herself rest, but then she’d started putting out inquiries.

She wouldn’t have done it at all, had the Alliance not listed her MIA. An MIA status means that they have not, and probably do not plan to recover the body. Liara’s still young, but she knows that the seedy underbelly of the galaxy could have several uses for the body of a dead hero—most of them highly unpleasant.

There are whispers, though. The Shadow Broker and the Collectors and—something. She doesn’t know what it is yet, or why there are also whispers from Cerberus, but it makes this whole event feel phony at best. Almost unreal, almost pointless, when there’s such an important mystery yet to be solved…

Until Ashley Williams gets onto the podium and begins to read from a book in her hands.

 

* * *

 

Before Ashley even begins reading, she can already feel her throat tightening, and her eyes are already blurring with tears. She’s read this poem a thousand times over, but this is—more personal than it’s ever been before. Her voice is bound to be raw and shaky, but that doesn’t matter, she thinks. This is a funeral. They’ll deal with it.   

> “ _O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,_  
>  _The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,_  
>  _The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,_  
>  _While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring._ ” 

She pauses here, taking a breath and continuing on in an even rougher voice: 

> “ _But O heart! heart! heart!_  
>  _O the bleeding drops of red,_  
>  _Where on the deck my Captain lies,_  
>  _Fallen cold and dead._ ”

The hall is absolutely silent now, and even through the pounding of her own pulse in her ears, Ashley can hear someone cough and shift in their seat.  

> _“O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;_  
>  _Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,_  
>  _For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,_  
>  _For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning._ ”

The next verse she’s modified, and tears drip freely down her cheeks, splashing the page and leaving dark little specks in their wake. Her breath comes in a hitching gasp as she pushes ever onward:   

> _“Here Captain! dear sister!_  
>  _This arm beneath your head!_  
>  _It is some dream that on the deck,_  
>  _You’ve fallen cold and dead._ ”

Her voice catches on that last word, and a sob pushes it’s way past her lips, but she has to keep going. Two more verses. She can do this.

Her breath is shaky and trembling as she blinks away the blur of tears and continues: 

> _“My Captain does not answer, her lips are pale and still,_  
>  _My sister does not feel my arm, she has no pulse nor will,_  
>  _The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,_  
>  _From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won._ ”

Someone’s sobbing voice breaks her concentration briefly, but she just braces her hands on the podium she’d been provided, and finishes the last verse, hoarsely and exhausted.  

> _“Exult O shores, and ring O bells!_  
>  _But I with mournful tread,_  
>  _Walk the deck my Captain lies,_  
>  _Fallen cold and dead._ ”

The hall is silent for a beat, then two, and then Anderson’s voice echoes loud and clear:

**“O Captain! my Captain!”**

And around the room, the voices of everyone else in attendance join in. Alliance officers, family members, and familiar faces from the Normandy—all together, and with the apparent support of the little crowd outside, comes the final, beautiful in its own sad way:

## “O Captain! my Captain!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ashley was born April 14, 2158, and Kira's birthday is November 9, 2159. Which to me means they probably could have reasonably met in boot camp after Kira got fast-tracked after Elysium.


	5. Azalea: Tali

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azalea - _Fragile and Ephemeral Passion_

“I  _told_  you you’d hate gardening,” came an annoyingly familiar, sing-song voice from behind her.

Tali frowned, glaring down at the dead plants as she leaned back on her haunches. “It’s not  _my_ fault,” she began, ignoring the way her girlfriend snorted with laughter, “that these plants just wanted to die.”

“They didn’t  _want to die_ , Tali. They’re  _plants_.”

“They begged me for death, Kira. And I, as a merciful god, graced them with it.”

That  _really_  made Kira laugh, tossing her head back and cackling. Tali found herself grinning, despite her disappointment with her recent attempt at agriculture, as Kira sat beside her and handed her a glass of dextro juice. 

“Here you go,  _Your Holiness_ ,” Kira chuckled, stretching her legs out in front of her in the sun. Delicately, she reached out and touched one of the dead leaves softly. “You gonna try again or leave that to someone else?”

Tali pursed her lips and sighed. “I was going to grow you a bunch of wildflowers,” she murmured. “So I could braid them into your hair and you’d look like a princess.”

Kira laughed again, delighted by the sound of it. “You wanted us to have a garden so you could put flowers in my hair?”

Tali shrugged. “I mean, and around the house. And maybe plant some fruit or something. But…yeah, mostly that.”

Her girlfriend giggled and leaned over to kiss her gently. “You’re ridiculous and I love you.”

Tali finally smiled. “I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Fragile and Short-Lived Love" = "hobby I was bad at"


	6. Marigold: Tali

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marigold - _Grief_

_“I have to go,” she’d gasped, shaking her head even as Tali tried to cling to her. “I’m sorry, baby, I have to. I can’t let Sun go on her own. I can’t. I have to go.”_

_“Kira, no! No, you promised—”_

_“I know,” she’d interrupted, stepping closer and touching the side of Tali’s helmet. “I know, my love, but I have to do this. I have to.” She paused, eyes trailing over her mask like she was imagining the face beneath it. “I love you. I always will.”_

_Tali’s eyes stung, and she shook her head. “Don’t do this to me. Keelah, don’t do this to me!”_

_“I have to go. I have to go. I’m sorry.” Kira leaned in and pressed a kiss to where her forehead would be on her faceplate. “I love you so much. I’m so sorry.”_

_And then she’d turned to Shepard and they’d both nodded, as Shepard stepped up and pressed her mouth one last, desperate time to Garrus’s before they turned away and started heading back towards the beam._

_Time blurred, somewhere between watching the Reaper beam hit them and finding herself and Garrus in the med bay. She couldn’t remember how they got there, or who had even been the one to lead them there._

_She was numb with shock, and grief because no_ way _had they made that. There was no way. They couldn’t have survived that. They couldn’t. They were doomed. The_ galaxy _was doomed and the_ love of her life _was_ dead _. She was dead. Dead. Dead, dead, dead. She—_

Tali woke with a strangled gasp, the cold air scraping at her throat as she sat bolt upright in her bed. She didn’t recognize her surroundings at all and—and why— _why wasn’t she wearing her suit?_ Where was it? What—

“Tali?” came a rough, quiet voice from beside her.

She gasped again, startled as she turned to look at the intruder, only to find—only to find Kira, propping herself up on her elbows, hair mussed from sleep with concern in her eyes. Tali felt her face crumble a split second before she threw herself at her girlfriend, burying her face in her shirt and sobbing.

Kira’s arms immediately came up to hold her closer, fingers gentle against her skin where her nightgown exposed it.

“You—you  _left me_!” Tali accused, muffled. “ _You went away!_  You went away and you left and you  _promised that you wouldn’t do that_!”

Kira didn’t say anything to that, just tightened her grip and murmured a quiet, “Shh, Tali. It’s okay. It’s over now. We’re safe.”

Tali sniffled miserably, pressing even closer. “You were gone.”

“…I came back.” Her fingers were making pleasant shapes against her back now, gently and slowly. “I’ll always come back to you. Always.”

“D-Don’t make promises you can’t keep, you  _bosh’tet.”_

Kira chuckled at that, and the vibrations Tali could feel in her chest calmed her a little. “Easier to keep now that I don’t plan on going anywhere without you ever again.”

Tali sniffled again, feeling sleep tugging at her mind again. “Just—don’t go where I can’t follow.”

Kira pressed a kiss to the top of her head, taking a slow, soft breath as she murmured, “Never again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my tumblr followers are angst gluttons and i blame them
> 
> should also mention i haven't actually played the very end of the game in the talimance so i had no idea what she actually said until just now since i watched it on youtube but its Fine


	7. Persimmon: EDI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Persimmon - _Bury Me Amid Nature's Beauty_

Getting used to having a body was—different.

Being in her ship was one thing—she could see everything, feel everything, control everything. Being in this body? The most she could do was move it, the most she could see was what its eyes could see. She didn’t have the capacity to  _like_  things at first, of course, but it wasn’t pleasant. She felt blind. Like she’d had a part of herself cut away.

But sometimes it had its advantages.

She and Jeff—the thought makes her want to smile, for some reason—now that they have decided on a romantic relationship, have been trying to spend more time together. 

It had been hard, at first. She was trying too hard (Shepard said, anyway) and Jeff, well, Jeff didn’t seem to quite know what he was doing either. And maybe that was what made it so much easier in the end—that neither of them knew what they were doing. They fell into a relationship easily, and EDI found that she was starting to understand why Shepard spent so much time with Garrus, why Kira and Tali were so inseparable.

Love was a fickle thing, quick and fleeting at times according to her research, but a good experience all the same.

And that was why she’d decided to take Jeff on this date, two years, 5 days, 17 hours, and 43 minutes after the destruction of the Reapers over London.

It wasn’t anything particularly fancy, but she had come up with it mostly on her own. 

She’d brought them to a place called Canada on Earth, somewhere away from the lights of the big cities. A lodge in the forest, overlooking a lake. Jeff had just raised an eyebrow at it when he saw it, but didn’t complain, which she took as a good sign.

She insisted they have dinner outside tonight, on the back deck. He’d complained, but she persisted, and when she finally got him out the door, he went quiet, and she thought maybe he realized why she wanted this.

Reflecting just so on the lake, the Milky Way stretched across the sky, beautiful and majestic, here in the quiet.

“Is this what you wanted to show me?” he asked after a minute, voice a little hoarse.

“Yes,” she replied, slipping her hand into his. “I am—not organic, obviously, but the world around me is. I thought we could appreciate its beauty together, to celebrate and remember.”

He hummed, tilting his head like he wasn’t happy with that answer. “You’re not organic, true, but—you’re just as much a product of nature as I am.”

She frowned. “Do you mean the metals in this body? I suppose—”

He laughed. “No, I mean, if nature hadn’t brought  _us_  into being—you know, humans—then we couldn’t have learned to build things. We couldn’t have learned to program computers and we couldn’t have learned to make a fully aware AI. Born or made, you’re just as natural as us, you know?”

Jeff turned to her then, grinning, and leaned over to peck her on the cheek lightly. “And you’re beautiful, too, since I haven’t said it in a few hours.”

“Two hours and 13 minutes, to be precise,” she responded almost automatically, and he laughed. 

“Right. I’ll try to keep up with that more often. Now, are we gonna stand  _here_  all night, or am I gonna get to eat something soon? I’m  _starving_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> " _Bury Me_ " how about no and how about fluff instead


	8. Kingcup: Legion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kingcup - _Youth, Innocence, Dawn_

Organics have not often openly cooperated with the geth. Not since The Morning War. Not since the Creators fled Rannoch.

But, there is something different about this organic. 

They first began to notice as they began their search for the human called Shepard. Tales all across the extranet of good deeds, done without expectation of reward, done simply because it was right. The one called Shepard helped everyone she could, did everything she could, insisting every life was worth something.

And, she opposed the Old Machines.

It made them wonder if she might want to join forces, if she’d be open-minded enough to consider working with the very people that fought her at Saren Arterius’s side, at Nazara’s side. The more they thought of this, the more they read, the closer they came to reaching a consensus.

If anyone could secure peace for the geth, the one called Shepard-Commander would be the one to do it.

But their search was in vain, it seemed. The reports that Shepard had been killed by an unknown enemy ship—by the geth, said the public news—make their search harder, but still they persist. 

Shepard-Commander opposes the Old Machines. Shepard-Commander is their last hope.

They travel to dozens of worlds, both inhabited and uncharted, but they find nothing—nothing until Alchera. 

There is no body to find—or at least, there is no body that matches Shepard’s DNA structure. They pick through the wreckage of the ship for hours, and find nothing worthwhile, until they find a piece of red-striped armor.

They remember the pictures of Shepard-Commander—the lone red stripe down her right shoulder that indicated her status as an N7 (human specialization, Alliance Navy, only awarded to the best of the best).

They stand for a long moment, holding the piece of armor in their hands. It’s broken and burnt, meaning that whoever had been in this armor most likely had not survived this crash. And yet…

There is no body to find. There are other pieces of armor, but they’re only fragments, not as put together as the arm piece they’d found first. 

If Shepard really is dead, they think, then their chances of peace with the Creators has dropped considerably. 

But organics also believe in hope, and they believe in luck, and in tokens that bring luck. Perhaps—perhaps this armor could bring them luck as well.

 

* * *

 

It’s years before they find the person they’d been seeking. Shepard-Commander, rebuilt by an organization called Cerberus (classified terrorist organization, pro-human extremists, dangerous), but she is just as the articles had all described.

She is kind.

She is kind, and she makes an effort to get to know them—gives them a name so that she can call them respectfully, so she can treat them as an equal.

_“My name is Legion, for we are many.”_

Human religion, Christian, Gospel of Mark, Chapter 5, Verse 9. A fitting metaphor, they suppose.  


Legion has only woken just in time to help the Commander with her endeavor to defeat the Collectors, but she first insists on helping Legion with their own problem. It’s selfless of her, to seek to help them, and Legion will make sure her kindness is never forgotten.

She decides to destroy the heretics in the end, and Legion finds that they agree with this decision. If the Old Machines are still lurking out beyond the edge of the galaxy, then the heretics will only help their cause. This decision provides the most likely outcome of success, should the war they are all expecting come to light.

 

* * *

 

When the Collectors are destroyed, Legion expects to be sent on their way. They already cause tension among the rest of the crew—especially with Creator Zorah. 

They do not expect her to bring them on any missions at all, and they do not expect her to continue to be kind to them.

Today, they are on an uncharted world—chasing a rumor of mercenaries holed up in a fort somewhere. It’s the middle of the night when they drop, and before the mercenaries know what is happening, they’ve already swept the facility.

But then Shepard-Commander doesn’t call the shuttle immediately.

She takes the hand of the other crewmate she’d brought with them—a turian, Garrus Vakarian (codename: Archangel, former C-Sec agent)—and leads them all outside, into the cool night air.

And then she sighs and leans on the railing of the balcony they’ve found themselves on, eyes trained on the horizon even as Garrus Vakarian comes up and wraps an arm around her waist. 

Legion approaches cautiously, unsure of what she’s doing, but she notices them anyway and throws them a soft smile. 

“Thought we’d watch the sunrise before we go,” she explains softly. “Sometimes it’s nice to stop and breathe for a bit.”

Legion nods hesitantly after a second, still not quite understanding, but turns to look out the way she’d been looking anyway. 

It’s a slower process than they’d have expected, watching the sky lighten. First the dark blue of night turns pale, then other colors begin to appear—purple, pink, orange, yellow—continuing until the stars above them have begun to fade and the sun is hovering fully above the hills in front of them.

Synthetics and organics are vastly different, but as Legion considers just how beautiful the dawn is, on any planet, they realize maybe they have more in common than any of them might think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this turned out a hell of a lot better than i was expecting it to


	9. Elder: Jack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elder - _Compassion_

Jack hasn’t been a soft person in a long, long time, if ever.

She didn’t do the feelings thing, she didn’t let people close. She didn’t let  _herself_   _care_ , because caring  _always_  comes back to bite you in the ass. It’s a fucking trap, and she’d had enough of those to last 20 lifetimes.

But goddammit, if Shepard didn’t pull that rug right out from under her.

It wasn’t so much just that Shepard was nice to her, making pleasant conversation (or trying to) without expecting anything in return. It wasn’t even really the fact that she genuinely seemed to want to help her get over her issues, to move on from Cerberus and be free.

It was the way Shepard trusted her that started the whole, sappy, disgusting mess.

Shepard never once questioned letting her have free roam of her ship. Never asked her to do something dangerous when Shepard could do it herself. Never came onto her, never asked for favors. All Shepard wanted was her at her back if she needed it, and maybe someone to laugh with every once in a while.

It was strange.

When she left the Normandy and found herself caught up in the Alliance, in an offer to teach biotics instead of fight with them, it was Shepard she thought of when she accepted it. Not that she’d ever  _admit_  it, of course, but it was something Shepard would have encouraged her to do. 

And damn, if that didn’t just make her that much softer. 

Teaching wasn’t something she thought she’d like—she was abrasive and mean and cruel and she liked it like that. She had no intention of coddling anyone through learning to punch a hole in someone’s chest, at least. 

And the kids  _liked_  that. They  _liked_  that she didn’t take any shit from them, that she treated them all like damn adults, because that’s what it’s like in a fight. Nobody is going to go easy on you, no matter how young you look, and they needed to know it, now more than ever.

When Shepard showed up to kick Cerberus’s ass, that was when she really got to see her kids in action—and they were  _good_. They were  _great_. She’d apparently taught them and taught them  _well._

She’d never felt so proud in her life, especially when Shepard smirked afterwards and said, “ _Damn right they are_ ,” when Sanders suggested that they be deployed to the front lines.

Still, she continued to pretend like she was still a stone cold bitch, even as she made sure her kids were safe as they could be while they were out there punching brutes to death. She was pretty sure it actually kept their morale up, when she yelled at them to do better, or called them stupid names. They liked it and she liked them.

It was really no wonder, she thought a while later, looking at the varren puppy rolling around on her apartment floor, that she’d been unable to leave the stupid thing at the pound. She really had gone soft, at least a little bit.

_Fuck you, Shepard._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack is one of those people you drag kicking and screaming into caring about other people and I love her


	10. Daylily: Kelly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daylily - _Coquetry_

Kelly Chambers, for all her psychological training, was not the most tactful person around. 

She knew this, though, and it didn’t bother her. It got her weird looks sometimes, certainly, but it also got results. Sometimes the blunt way was the best way, she’d discovered. Sometimes you had to say something weird to break make a crack in someone’s defenses.

She tried to help Shepard where she could, but the Commander kept her distance for the most part, distrust clear in her eyes and her tone of voice. Kelly didn’t blame her, after what happened on Akuze. Were she in her place, Kelly was sure she’d have felt the same.

Trying to get a read on the aliens Shepard recruited, however, proved a bit harder than she’d have liked. 

The turian was stand-offish, though, she noticed that he was not that way with the Commander—not at all. In fact, she noticed that they stood almost intimately close to each other whenever they were not in the battery. She also noticed, when she said something rather strange about wanting to hold him close and tell him everything would be alright, that something akin to jealousy flared up in Shepard’s eyes. 

It was almost funny, even as the Commander turned stiffly away to go to the galaxy map.

Almost.

The salarian liked to talk, and Kelly thought it was endearing, at least, that he seemed so eager to share his knowledge. The krogan was—well, a krogan, and she didn’t get farther than that really. Samara and Thane both kept to themselves, and didn’t say much no matter how much she asked.

The quarian was also someone from Shepard’s past, Kelly figured out, and also another person Shepard was fiercely protective of. Kelly’s quip (weird as she knew it was) about wondering what her skin felt like was met with a sharp, “I don’t know, but if you keep saying things like that, I’m pretty sure you’ll never find out.”

The humans Shepard recruited were easier.

Zaeed was gruff, and coarse around the edges, but nice enough for the most part, so long as he had no problem with you. She made sure that he had no problem with her.

Kasumi was—hard to find, first of all. She tended to disappear if Kelly ever went looking for her, but when she did talk, Kelly could tell there was something there, in the back of her mind. She was lonely, not just for her ex-partner, but for anyone. She certainly didn’t strike Kelly as the type to have a lot of friends, anyway, though that changed slightly with the addition of Shepard’s cousin, Kira.

Kira took right to Kasumi, and it was nice to see that both of them seemed to have found good friends in one another. Shepard seemed to take to Kasumi well, too, she noticed, and the three of them often ate meals together in the mess hall, giggling like teenagers.

The only human Kelly really couldn’t figure out was Jack.

She tried the kind way, only to be shut out immediately. She tried a more blunt way, only to be literally turned away. 

“Get outta my face, Doc. I don’t need this.”

And so, she thought, she’d try another way.

She flirted.

She wasn’t particularly good at it, especially with someone so abrasive, but before she knew it, Jack was grinning—albeit half-heartedly, closer to a smirk. Jack’s mouth was dirty, and half-naked as she was, Kelly soon found that the dark underbelly of the ship was starting to feel a little  _too_ warm. Even with her bad flirting.

She wasn’t sure how she ended up against the wall, with Jack in front of her, eyes predatory and calculating, but part of her wasn’t sure she minded. They stayed like that for a long minute, watching each other, until Jack smirked and laughed, stepping back out of Kelly’s personal space.

“Might wanna be careful what you say, Doc. You might get in over your head one of these days.”  


_That_ , Kelly thought dizzily as she turned to leave,  _doesn’t actually sound all that bad._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my friend ships kelly/jack and i have to admit it does...have its appeal


	11. Sweet Peas and Yarrow: Shakarian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sweet Pea - _Delicate Pleasures_  
>  Yarrow - _Cure For A Broken Heart_

His heart still aches sometimes, even when she’s right beside him. Memories of every time he’d lost her, or nearly, still swimming around in his mind somewhere. 

After the SR-1, he’d been hurting so badly that he’d ended up quitting his job, and not for the reason he gave her. Sure, he did get fed up with the bureaucrats and the red tape, but in truth what had been slowly killing him in the end was being reminded of  _her_  and how he’d failed her. 

Everywhere he went, there was something there to remind him of her. Places they’d been together, people they’d spoken to (he can’t look Conrad Verner in the eye, even when the man recognizes him and tries to wave him down). He remembered the way she’d laughed at the hanar lingerie shop in the Presidium, how she’d bought them all ice cream once with her own money because she needed to cool down after speaking to Udina.

And then there were the  _pictures_. The vids and recruitment posters were one thing, but then there were the little memorials, the flowers and stuffed animals and candles that lingered for weeks after her funeral—he can still hear Williams’s  _O Captain, My Captain_  in his dreams sometimes—it had all just rubbed her death further in his face, until he all but broke.

That was how he’d ended up on Omega in the first place. How he’d gotten cornered and how one of his last thoughts before calling his dad to say goodbye had been,  _Maybe I’ll get to see her again, after this_.  _Maybe I’ll take her to dinner._

But then she’d been there, for real. Alive and missing her scars—replaced by funny, glowing lines—but it was  _her_. It was  _Shepard_  and she was there to help him, like some kind of goddamn guardian angel sent by the Spirit of Palaven itself. 

And it was no wonder that they ended up growing so close, really. He’d already had feelings for her, probably, and she was just so easy to talk to and be around. She made him laugh, and it had been so long since he really laughed that when he realized he was falling, it was like plummeting off a cliff. There was no coming back from this—from her. 

She was it. She was everything.

So much happened, between the moment he realized he wanted her to the first time he realized he loved her— _curled up in her bed, her mouth on his, breath hot on his plates, soft curves filling his palms so perfectly it’s like she’d been made for him, like he’d been made for her. He never felt like he belonged so completely than he did when he was here, in her arms._

There was the Collector base, and then the Bahak System ( _terror incarnate,_  because he’d gone and done the same dumbass move he did on the SR-1 and hooked her vitals up to his visor—but Kira was there this time, and she made it back to him, in the end). 

When she’d left for Earth to face her judgment, it had hurt all over again. He kissed her goodbye, severely debated on asking her to run away with him—they could go anywhere, be anyone, do anything, but he knew she’d never do that. 

Sun Shepard would never run from her duty. It was one of the things he loved about her.

Then  _everything_  that happened with the war, kept threatening to rip his heart to shreds with every step they took. His mother dying, right as the Reapers apparently invaded Earth, and he felt selfish and childish for worrying about Shepard when his own planet was burning, but how could he not? She was the love of his life, and he’d never even  _told_  her.

But she’d still come back to him, in the end, like she always did. No matter what happened, she always came home. She always found her way back to him. Always.

It was no different during the war. No different when she faced down that Reaper on Tuchanka, or that Reaper on Rannoch. No different when she forced him to live out his own personal worst nightmare on a world made of water, where she went where he couldn’t follow and he just had to sit and  _wait_ , knowing that if she needed his help again, he’d be just as helpless as he had that first time.

She always came home. Always. 

It’s been months since the end of the war now, a year next month, and they’ve finally got their own place. He’d asked her if she wanted to stay on Earth, but she’d told him no, told him that they should move to Palaven, so he can be close to his family, and he hadn’t argued much. He wanted to go home, too.

He still has nightmares, though, just as she does. Even with the sea breeze floating in from the open window across the room, even with her soft, warm body curled up next to his. Even with their wedding—their  _real_  wedding, not the tiny oath-swearing they’d had in her cabin on the Normandy—looming ever closer on the horizon, the heartbreak lingers.

But it’s easier to breathe now. Easier to wake up from those dreams and calm right back down, now that she’s always next to him, always ready to wake up and kiss him until the shaking stopped. 

Those are the moments he holds most dear, the moments that heal the ache the most—when they get to just lay in bed and kiss and breathe and do nothing else. It’s simple and sweet, domestic in the best way, and he loves every second of it.

He’s woken up before her today, the tropical storm raging against the glass having roused him before he’d planned to get up. He lays there for a long moment, listening to the rain and watching the rise and fall of her shoulders where she’s turned away from him in her sleep. Counts the freckles on her shoulders (27 and 8 in a shape that remind him of his favorite constellation) before sighing and sliding closer under the sheets, curling around her as he slides his hand around her waist.

She hums at the touch, as he leans in and presses his mouth to her skin, sighing again.

“Mm, what time is it?” she mumbles, voice rough with sleep.

“Early,” he answers just as softly. “I missed you.”

That makes her giggle, slow and sleepy. “I didn’t go anywhere, Gare.”

“I dreamt you did,” he confesses. “I dreamt about every time you did.”

Her hand covers his on her stomach, and she squeezes gently and turns towards him, searching. She kisses his cheek and he grins softly, making her giggle as his mandible brushes her skin. 

“I’m here now,” she says simply. “I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere. I swear it.”

He nuzzles his forehead to her temple, and takes another slow breath. “I’ll hold you to that.”

She giggles, bringing her hand up to touch his face gently. “I’d expect nothing less, Mr. Vakarian-Shepard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stop asking me to break my children's hearts


	12. Gladiolus: Thane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gladiolus - _You Pierce My Heart_

It wasn’t— _planned_. 

It wasn’t planned at  _all_ , though nothing in his life as of late had been planned. Not well, at least.

It had been a complete accident, running into her at the spaceport, and he meant that quite literally. He’d been too busy trying to find his fake ID and talking to Kolyat to see her where she was walking towards him, tall though she was.

He’d apologized immediately, rambling as he bent to pick up the papers she’d dropped and only just registering the Alliance blue on her sleeves as she bent to pick them up as well. He wouldn’t have paused much longer than that, eager to get on their way to some place called  _New Mexico_ when he spotted it.

 _Shepard_.

 _Captain Hannah Shepard_  read the paper, though a quick scan revealed the names  _Sun_  and  _Kira_ as well. His friends, neither of which had been answering any of his vid messages.

“Do you know them?” he heard himself ask, handing the papers back to the woman he’d nearly knocked over. 

Green eyes, the color of the trees that grew so very close to the oceans on Kahje, blinked up at him curiously. “Do I know who?”

“Commander Shepard and—and the Lieutenant-Commander,” he explained, aware that Kolyat was now looking at him in exasperation. Too long here and they’d miss their flight.

She smiled, though, and the sight was warm and sweet. “Oh! Yes. Kira is my daughter, and Sun’s my niece. Do  _you_  know them?”

“I did,” Thane answered quietly. “I helped them fight the Collectors. I—do you think you could get some messages to them? I can pay you for your trouble.”

She laughed, nodding as she hugged her papers to her chest. “Of course. And, no need to pay me. I’m sure they’d love to hear from a friend.”

“Thank you,” he replied earnestly. “You have no idea what this means.”

“No worries,” was all she said, smiling as she tapped something into her omni-tool. “Send them to me and I’ll make sure the girls get them.”

 

* * *

 

He didn’t see her again until after his vacation, until after Kolyat insisted that he check himself permanently into Huerta Memorial.

It was, again, an accident, though he managed not to knock her over this time. It seemed she was there to visit someone she knew, one of the doctors, but she recognized him immediately when their eyes met from across the room. He didn’t expect much more than that, but then she was in front of him, smiling and holding out a hand for him to shake.

“We meet again,” she said as he took her hand. “My daughter tells me your name is  _Thane_.”

He blinked, smiling a little. “And yours is Hannah.”

She seemed surprised by that, furrowing her eyebrows and squinting a little. “You remember that from the papers I dropped? I believe the email address I gave you only had  _H. Shepard_  on it.”

Thane smiled, and his chest felt strangely lighter than it had in days. “Drell have perfect memories. We can relive any moment in our lives with perfect clarity.”

She was still holding his hand. “Sounds useful. Some days I can barely remember if I’ve eaten breakfast.”

He let her hand drop then, tilted his head with a hum. “Perhaps. It’s difficult to control at times. Some of us disappear into…mmm, let’s call it solipsism.”

“I…don’t think I know that word, sorry.”

Thane chuckled a little—neither of her relatives had known it either. He opened his mouth to explain, only to be cut off by someone calling for her.

“Captain! Admiral Anderson is available on vid-comm. Says it’s about your daughter.”

Hannah turned towards the officer, nodding. “Right, tell him I’ll be right there.” She turned back to him, then, smiling apologetically. “Duty calls, I’m afraid. Perhaps we can pick this up another time? Maybe over drinks?”

“I don’t know that the hospital staff will agree to that.”

She laughed again, and the sound was just as warm as he remembered it had been. Not too loud, but not soft either. The laughter of someone comfortable in every part of who they are and where they are.

“I’m a Captain in the Fifth Fleet with my own ship, Thane. I’m sure I can work something out.”

 

* * *

 

They did end up getting drinks, about a week later.

She brought him somewhere near the Silversun Strip, but not quite on it. A tiny bar on the edges of the lights and sounds of the strip, quiet but not too quiet. There was jazz music playing from a—what did humans call it? A jukebox?—in the back of the bar. She ordered something called a ‘Sex On The Beach’, which nearly made him choke on the breath he was taking, but only nearly. 

When the bartender turned to him, though, he found his words strangely missing, and instead ended up mumbling something about whiskey that was apparently good enough as they turned and left without another word.

“I looked up the word solipsism,” Hannah said pleasantly after a beat, leaning forward on her elbows on the table, “and I’m still not quite sure what you meant.”

He hummed, having expected that. Many other species found it difficult to understand. “Then, let me try to explain it another way. When a memory feels as real as life, it's as valid as life. Thinking about a moment brings back the smell of cut grass, the warmth of another's hand in yours," he paused, considering the already warm flush on her cheeks, and her full lips. "The taste of another's tongue in your mouth."

She coughed abruptly, covering her mouth as her ears turned the strangest shade of pink. "I was," she began, strained, clearing her throat. "I was gonna say that I got it, but you lost me there."

He smiled—he hadn't had quite this much fun teasing anyone in a while, even if it was entirely harmless. "Drell can get lost in our memories if we aren't careful. Wouldn't _you_ rather lose yourself in such a memory than spend a night alone, staring at walls of steel and plastic?"

She considered him for a long moment, eyes darting between his like she was trying to find the joke, or the lie, or some sort of tell about whether he was really flirting with her or not. He tilted his head at her, waiting, and she snorted, rolling her eyes as the bartender arrived with their drinks, taking a long sip before sighing and pointedly changing the subject. “ _Right_. Anyway. You’re around my age, aren’t you? You got any kids?”

“One,” he replied, shifting in his seat. “Kolyat. He was with me the first time we met.”

Hannah rolled her eyes upward again, thinking this time. “He was blue, wasn’t he?” When Thane confirmed, she smiled again and asked, “Where’s his mom?”

Thane only just managed to keep himself from falling back into  _that_  particular memory. “Dead,” he answered flatly. 

Hannah hummed, but unexpectedly didn’t push farther than that. “Kira’s dad is dead, too—though I’m sure she told you about that. I hunted down the bastards responsible for it, though, and I know she doesn’t know about _that_.”

He went quiet for a long moment, eyes cataloguing her face—freckles and sun-kissed skin and tiny scars peppering her cheeks like she’d been hit with shrapnel. He tilted his head. “Perhaps you and I are more alike than I previously thought.”

She winked, laughing as she took another drink. “Doesn’t sound so bad to me.”

 _No_ , he thought.  _No, it isn’t bad at all._

 

* * *

 

The third time they met, the circumstances weren’t even close to ideal. The reports had just come in that Earth was under siege by the Reapers, and Hannah was in the hospital this time apparently visiting a friend who’d been hurt. She was sitting in the waiting room when he found her, her braid disheveled as she hung her head, Alliance dress blues wrinkled and dirty from whatever had happened.

He only just registered a new stripe on her shoulder when he came up to talk to her.

“Hannah?” he asked gently, not sure how to approach a possible grieving mother.

She jumped a little, looking up at him with tired eyes. She smiled weakly when she recognized him. “Hi, stranger.”

He wasn’t sure what to do in a situation like this. “Have you heard…?”

“From my daughter? No. I know that the Normandy made it off Earth, though, so I’m hoping…”

Carefully, Thane sat in the seat beside her, sliding down in the cushions and fixing his gaze on the Presidium out the window. At length, he took as deep a breath as he could and said, “I’m sure she made it.”

Hannah huffed. “What makes you say that?”

“I fought beside her for a year. Her and the Commander. If anyone could have made it away from the Reapers…”

She looked over at him miserably, head propped up by her hand. “I hope you’re right, Thane.”

Reaching over and taking her free hand carefully in his, he squeezed gently. “I am.”

 

* * *

 

They didn’t get to spend much time together, in the end. She was too busy with the Fleet, and her ships, and the war—and he was too sick to help, but that didn’t stop the affection from blooming.

It was slow, at first. Friendly greetings and ‘ _how are you?_ ’s across the extranet evolving into longer letters. They told each other everything, anything, to distract from their own predicaments. He told her of Irikah, and how they’d first met, and she told him of her favorite flavor of ice cream and how she still couldn’t eat it because it reminded her of her late husband. They talked about their children—their first steps, their first words, the first time they laughed. Hannah talked of how she and Kira used to stay up a little too late making up bedtime stories in which they saved the galaxy together, and Thane talked of how Kolyat used to love to dance.

Emails turned into chats, chats to voice-messages, voice-messages to vid comms. Sometimes they’d sit up late into the night, both obviously exhausted but giggling anyway at whatever they were talking about. 

It was fun. It was strange. It was oddly familiar.

It felt like home.

She came to visit him one more time, just before the Cerberus coup. She took him out to dinner, and they slow-danced in the middle of a dimly lit bar. They still spoke of nothing, still both wrapped up in their own problems, but then her eyes locked on his for a moment too long as a car’s headlight lit up her face.

_Emeralds in the sun, pools of water tinted green from the summer foliage growing around it. Sparkling, iridescent, incorruptible._

He had just noticed a fleck or two of gold in her left iris when she kissed him for the first time.

Her lips were just as soft as he’d expected, sticky with her lipstick, but warm all the same—much warmer than he was used to. His heart pumped an unsteady beat in his chest, even though the touch only lasted a moment, and he found himself captivated.

He followed after her when she pulled away with an apology on her lips.

Words were scarce after that, and for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t afraid of tomorrow. Thane felt his heart beat and the breath fill his lungs, felt soft fingers on his skin and realized that, whatever came, he was glad to have this moment, this night. 

And he would always be glad for that happy accident, that day on Earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thane/Hannah Shepard is the rarest of rarepairs and I am Sorry


	13. Sweet Pea: Thane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sweet Pea - _Delicate Pleasures_

They move to the desert, when the war is done. 

There had been moments—one particular moment—where no one expected him to live. By all accounts, he  _shouldn’t_  have lived, and yet…

 

_Hands on mine, five fingers to four, breath hot on my lips, and she breathes my name—a plea, an endearment, a prayer. “I never want to leave this room.”_

_“Neither do I,” I murmur, hands on her hips now, full and covered in tiny stripes like lightning.  
_

_“When this is over,” she says, pulling away now to look at me, hands on my face. “When this is over, I don’t want this to be over. When the war is over, I want to keep—to keep you.” She smiles, sadness in her eyes. “I haven’t been this happy in a very long time.”  
_

_I smile, but it doesn’t reach my eyes either. “That might be the hallucinogen talking.”_

_That makes her laugh, toss her head back in mirth, leaning into me still. “Maybe so, but the point still stands. I have fun with you. I feel like myself again, and I haven’t felt that way in so long, Thane.”_

_I can’t bear to tell her no. “Anything you want, siha.”_

_She asks about the word later, argues about not really being a Shepard, but I wave her off. Shepard is just a name—what she and her daughter and her niece share is something far deeper than that. She is just as powerful and beautiful and daring as either of them, and I will make her see it, or die trying._

And then he’d pulled through, miraculously, even after having been impaled on a sword and losing so much blood. He’d gone into a coma—a long one, apparently—and when he woke, there she was, with his son at her side telling him they’d won. The war was finished, the Reapers dead and gone. It was over and they were free. 

He still doesn’t quite believe it, sometimes.

Sometimes he wakes up, gasping and coughing because he may be in remission, but he’ll never be fully healed. Not without a miracle. He wakes up unable to breathe, and she is right there, rubbing his back until the fit subsides. Sometimes she rests her cheek against his shoulder and hums to him as he struggles to breathe, and it helps. 

 _She_  helps. 

When Hannah brings home the furry, four-legged creature for the first time, he wonders if she’s lost her mind—especially when she claims that it’s here to help.

“He’s a service dog!” she says, picking up the wiggly creature and laughing as it licks at her face. “Specially trained for Kepral’s Syndrome.”

“…specially trained?” he repeats curiously, walking up to where she’s still standing in the foyer, reaching out to let the little thing lick at his finger as well.

“He can tell when you’re getting ready to have an attack,” Hannah explains, “and then you can take your medication to help prevent it. It—It’ll make me feel better, when I’m not home, to know that you’ve got someone else watching out for you.”

“I can take care of myself, you know.”

“I know!” she replies quickly. “I know, but—this is just an extra safety measure. And he’s a sweetheart.” She fixes him with a look that has his hesitance melting away in an instant. “Please? Just, let him stay for a little while. See how you like him.”

He scratches the dog’s ear gently, smiling as it goes right back to trying to lick at his hand, and nods. “Of course, siha. If it will make you happy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll die with this rarepair


	14. Elder: Miranda & Grunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elder - _Compassion_

Miranda doesn’t like a lot of people, for one reason or another. Usually the feeling is mutual, and she knows it, but she likes it that way. The less feelings to get hurt, the better.

She doesn’t like many people, but there are some exceptions to the rule. She wouldn’t call them friends, necessarily, but people she respects and admires for their…tenacity, she supposes.

For example, Commander Shepard she respects wholeheartedly. She’d trust her with her life, though it takes a lot of time for Shepard to warm up to  _her_. Not that she blames her, mind.

Okay, well, maybe a little. Cerberus aside, Miranda  _did_  kind of save her life.

She likes the Commander’s cousin well enough as well—a prodigy, like herself, though Kira seems to enjoy not being in the spotlight anymore. Miranda had expected resentment towards Shepard for stealing her thunder, but Kira shrugs her off when she asks about it.

“Never really wanted to be a hero, anyway,” she says once. “Only reason what happened on Elysium happened was because there was no one else to do it. Had to be me, or we’d have all been slaughtered, you know? I’m not a genius or a prodigy or whatever, really. I’m just—morally obligated to do shit. My conscience won’t let me sit by and do nothing and  _believe me_ , I’ve tried.”

Miranda was made to be a genius, to be perfect in every way, but she can understand moral obligation. She gets that. She’d done the same with her sister, and she thinks that perhaps Kira would do the same for Shepard.

Miranda doesn’t like a lot of people, but she likes Jacob well enough. That comes more with time than anything, though, she’s sure. They’ve known each other for years, and were…a little more than friends once. Not for long, because Miranda doesn’t do attachment well, but enough to form a bond that’s lasted longer than most.

She doesn’t like a lot of people, and definitely doesn’t like many aliens, but the newest edition of the crew almost seems too much—a krogan. A fully grown, but still a baby, krogan.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust that Shepard made the right call, or at least a decent call, but Miranda thinks sometimes Shepard is blinded by her compassion for others, by her need to help, so Miranda keeps an eye on the situation. 

From a reasonably safe distance, of course.

And then Shepard brings the krogan onto Illium, to help Oriana, and Miranda almost says something to her.

Almost.

She doesn’t trust the krogan much at all, but Shepard does, after  _whatever_  happened on Tuchanka the last time, so she lets Shepard take the lead, because sometimes that’s easier than arguing. In fact, sometimes it’s easier just to follow Shepard in general—she gets tired of being the only one in charge, sometimes.

They manage to help Ori before Niket can send her back to her father, _their_ father, and everything turns out much better than she’d thought it would. She even got to speak to Ori a bit, which was more than she’d ever expected to get.

Shepard disappears almost immediately after they get back to the Normandy, mumbling about a nap, but leaving Grunt and Miranda alone (mostly, save for the pilot who seemed to be listening to something through his headpiece anyway).

Miranda doesn’t like people, but the krogan came through for her when she needed it—helped save her life several times tonight.

“Thank you,” she says after a moment, as they both finally move out of the docking bay, “for helping tonight.”

Grunt—grunts. 

“Shepard is my battlemaster. I go wherever she goes, if she’ll let me.”

Miranda smiles a little at that. “Sure, but you could have said no to helping me.”

Grunt grunts again. “You’re strong, too, like Shepard, but different. I heard you say that your father engineered you to be perfect.”

“I did,” Miranda says, not sure where this is going.

Grunt eyes her carefully, but doesn’t turn his head as they reach the elevator. “So was I.”

Huh. She hadn’t thought of that.

She wants to say something else, or feels like she needs to, but then the elevator is stopping on her floor, and she can’t think of a reason to stay. 

The elevator door slides shut, and Miranda wanders back to her room, ignoring Gardner when he asks if she’s hungry. She’s had a long day, and nothing would please her more than curling up in bed for a nice long nap.

It still takes her a while to actually fall asleep, with her thoughts buzzing around her head like a swarm of angry bees. So much had happened today, but she kept coming back to Grunt and what he’d said.

_So was I._

Miranda doesn’t like a lot of people, definitely doesn’t like a lot of aliens, but maybe…maybe she’d try a little harder, moving forward. Maybe making friends with the rest of the crew wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Krogan are indestructible enough, at least, right? Would take a hell of a lot for her father to take  _that_  kind of friend away from her.

When she finally drifts off to sleep, she finds her chest feels a little lighter, and the loneliness that had lingered for so long had eased a little.

How strange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's apparently quite a few people that headcanon miranda and grunt as reasonably close with almost a sibling-like relationship. 
> 
> huh.


	15. Sweet Pea: Jack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sweet Pea - _Delicate Pleasures_

The first time Jack had chocolate, she was pretty sure she’d just bitten into heaven itself. She’d never had anything like it, never  _felt_  anything quite like it, and it was really no wonder that she’d stuffed her face full with those chocolate chip cookies. They were delicious, and she couldn’t remember the last time—if ever—she’d eaten anything that tasted so  _good_.

That wasn’t the only thing that she found tasted good, after her escape from Cerberus, but she did keep coming back to it. Not as often, because she saw having a sweet tooth as a weakness to be exploited, but…there was no harm in picking up a box of cookies every now and then and pigging out. 

Until someone else figured out her secret.

She’s not sure  _how_  Shepard managed to figure it out, nor does she really want to know (though, in all honesty, it was probably Kasumi or the freaky AI that ran the ship). She’s just curious as to why Shepard brought her a chocolate cake with candles on it.

“I don’t have a birthday,” she says after a minute of silence, crossing her arms and eyeing the cake warily.

“Not officially, no,” Shepard agrees, moving to set the cake down on the table nearby, “but it’s been a month since we blew up that facility on Pragia.”

“…so?”

Shepard laughs. “So, I figured that you could use that to celebrate your birthday. I don’t know if we’ll have time to wait for the 1 year anniversary to roll around, so—I thought we’d celebrate now.”

Jack blinks a few times. “ _Really_?”

“That,” Shepard says, licking some chocolate frosting off her finger delicately, “and I was in the mood for cake. You like chocolate, right?”

There’s something in the way she asks that that makes Jack narrow her eyes, suspicious and looking for an ulterior motive, but the cake does smell really good and,  _well_ …

“Heh. Who doesn’t?”

Shepard smiles, and Jack finds herself smiling back.

“That’s the spirit. Happy Birthday, Jack.”

“Thanks…weirdo.”

Shepard’s laughter echoes around the room as Jack shoves a rather large bite of cake into her mouth. Maybe Shepard isn’t so bad after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack deserves all the sweets in the world tbh


	16. Nettle: Hannah Shepard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nettle - _Cruelty_

Hannah Shepard is not a vengeful person. Not anymore. Not after she’d left Earth, not after she’d quit the gangs and straightened up her act.

But sometimes she slipped up, and sometimes she slipped up  _bad_.

They probably shouldn’t have let her be involved in the raid on Torfan, truth be told. She had too much bad blood with the batarians to have possibly had a clear head in the least—but Hackett insisted. Said that he wanted someone like her out there keeping everyone calm.

Whatever the hell that meant. 

It had been fine, at first. They were a little overwhelmed, of course, because this moon belonged to a ring of particularly nasty criminals, an entire network of a base built under the ground itself, but they managed. 

Major Kyle, who’d been mostly in charge of planning the mission, had given Hannah free reign over a group of younger recruits. Told her to go and kick their asses “for Elysium,” which also is something they should not have said to her, because she’d  _been_  on Elysium. She’d been there and she was already angry.

It was only fair that the entire thing ended as it began—in blood.

She wasn’t going to kill the surrendering criminals at first, really. She’d planned on taking some in alive, seeing them face trial for what they did, and all that jazz. 

And then one of them opened his fucking mouth.

“Shepard, huh? Pretty sure my brother killed a few Shepards a while ago. On Mindoir. You didn’t know them, did you?”

The room was already starting to pulse red, and she knew the exact sound his neck would make if she twisted it a certain way. Knew the sound his breath would make if she took her omni-blade to his throat and let him bleed.

“You might not want to test my patience,” she said flatly, keeping her eyes on her omni-tool display to avoid escalating the situation.

“Hm. Guess you did know ‘em. Is that bitch that escaped the raid here with you? Can I talk to her? I know she was on Elysium, too. I saw her there, but I didn’t get a chance to say hello before your buddies were swarming the place. That, and that other bitch that was inside the colony walls with that  _fucking_  shotgun. Stupid—”

Hannah couldn’t hear anymore, ears ringing as adrenaline pumped hot and fast through her veins. This man—this man and his merry band of criminals had been the ones responsible. They’d killed Hana and probably Li. They’d orphaned Sun. They’d killed her husband, tried to kill her. Kira had left for N7 training a month ago, but she knew she still had nightmares about Elysium. Could still hear her screaming every time she fell asleep, because maybe she’d been named a war hero, but she was still just a kid.

She was just a  _kid._ Sun had  _just been_  a  _kid._ And  _he was responsible_.

Without thinking, Hannah turned and put a bullet through the leader’s skull, not even moving when the whole room went quiet and he fell forward.

The two Marines that had survived the initial assault on the base both looked at her, slack-jawed, as the rest of the prisoners looked on in disbelief. She didn’t even look up as she gave the order.

“Kill them. All of them. The Alliance isn’t taking prisoners today.”

 

* * *

 

She wouldn’t say what she felt was remorse, when Hackett found out what happened and chewed her out for it. Hannah wasn’t a cruel person, or a vengeful person, but…

“You directly violated orders  _and_  protocol, Shepard. What am I supposed to do with that?”

She looked up at his image on the screen. “I don’t know, Admiral. Lie?”

“Captain, you got good people killed today.”

“And their sacrifice has probably saved a lot more good people,” she argued.

“What could you possibly mean by that?”

She shook her head. “You know my background, sir. My moral compass has never pointed the exact same direction as yours.”

“I expected you to have grown into being able to make good decisions.”

“At least I made a decision,” she snapped. “Kyle would’ve let them walk.”

“To avoid war with the batarians, Captain, that may have been a better course of action.”

She shook her head again, looking away now at the framed photo on her desk. Their one and only big family photo—the only picture they had with everyone in it. There was a picture next to that of Hannah and Hana, with little Sun in Hana’s lap, smiling at the camera. Beside it was a smaller set of photos, 11-year-old Kira and her 15-year-old cousin having snuck off and found a photo booth somewhere during Gran-Gran Shepard’s 90th Birthday Bash. 

The one and only time Kira had even gotten to meet her cousin since she was very small, and this was all that was left to remember that time by, thanks to those pirates.

“We had this saying, where I’m from back on Earth,” she said quietly after a moment. “ _Leave even one wolf alive, and the sheep will never be safe._  I protect my people, Admiral. Whatever it takes.”

Hacket scoffed over the vid comm. “Are you suggesting genocide, Captain?”

“ _No_. But these men hurt my family, and you shouldn’t have sent me in there without expecting this reaction,” she replied, looking back at her commanding officer.

Hackett looked very tired, even on the screen. “…are you blaming  _me_  for this, Shepard?”

“No, Admiral. I take responsibility for what I did. It won’t happen again, but I have to ask that you avoid putting me in a situation where I might have the opportunity to repeat my actions.”

The Admiral sighed heavily and nodded. “Noted, Captain. I’ll—try to downplay this. Get some rest.”

“Of course, Admiral. You, too.”

The connection cut, and Hannah was left alone with her thoughts once more.

… _shit_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannah sent me on a wild goose chase that was about 2000 extra words before I got to this part finally so hhhhh
> 
> also yeah that might be a game of thrones quote but it fits so fight me


	17. Xeranthemum: Samara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xeranthemum - _Eternity, Immortality_

Asari do not think like other species.

The coming decades that might be an entire salarian or human’s adulthood, is merely a blink of an eye in the asari lifespan. A few decades is nothing, compared to a millenium—or possibly more, if you were one to believe in superstition and conspiracy theories.

(They are  _not_  as robust as the krogan, though meeting asari like Aria T’Loak sometimes leaves Samara wondering how many more years she could theoretically get out of this body. 800 years and she hasn’t reached the Matriarch phase just yet.)

When Morinth— _Rana,_ Samara thinks, watching the nebula pass outside the window of the observation deck,  _my Rana—_ finally draws her last breath, Samara realizes that perhaps there is something to that human saying: 

“The years are starting to weigh on me.”

She has not been able to sleep normally, in the past few day cycles on the Normandy, and her meditating has only brought her so much calm since that moment.

Samara feels— _older_ , she wants to say, but she’s not sure what that means. She’s nearly 500 years into her Matron years, and yet she’s never felt quite like this. Old and tired, like she almost wants to give it all up and sleep until there is nothing left of her but bones—bones and stardust.

When Shepard comes to visit, as a part of her daily rounds, she doesn’t turn her away this time. She doesn’t have to, because Sun doesn’t try to talk—instead, she simply pads quietly across the floor and settles into position beside her, letting out a long, quiet breath. After a beat, Samara feels a shift in the energy of the room as Shepard’s biotics flare, and she smiles a little.

If nothing else, she seems to have passed on a healthy habit.

The silence, as always, does not last.

“What is it like?” Shepard asks softly, and when Samara turns curiously, she finds the Commander’s eyes trained on the window. “I couldn’t imagine being able to live centuries.”

That’s not the question she was expecting, and it makes her wonder…no. Humans have no psycho-telepathic tendencies. It’s just a lucky guess.

“I have not really given it much thought until recently,” Samara replies after a moment, looking back out the window as well. “When the ability to live centuries upon centuries is built into your very DNA, you don’t often try to think what life might be like if you were only allowed to live one of those centuries.”

“And not even all of it, in our case,” Sun says amiably, and Samara sees her grinning out of the corner of her eye. “We get maybe 60-80 years out of ours, before we either get to old to want to move, or too sick. And then we’re basically children for 20 years, too. Not a lot of time to get in a lot of adventuring.”

Samara hums. “No, I suppose it isn’t.  _You,_ however, seem to be doing better than most.”

Shepard laughs, tilting her head back, and Samara sees something of her youngest daughter, Falere. It makes her heart ache.

“Good point,” Shepard finally says, nodding. “I’m doin’ my best, at least, and that’s all that matters, right? Still…living that long, especially if you’ve got people to live that long with, well—it must be nice.”

“I suppose. I wouldn’t really know, though, having isolated myself as I did. This is…the first time I have traveled with companions in a long time.”

“Yeah, you mentioned.” She shifts again, so that she can lean her back against the sofa, still carefully not looking at Samara. “I know you’re not technically immortal, but it would feel like it, to me. Being able to live 1000 years—that’s gotta be incredible. I was talking to my friend about that once, back on the other Normandy—she was a Prothean researcher, see—and I pointed out to her once that if, assuming her parental line was all consistent, then she’s not all that far removed from the Protheans. 50,000 years is 50 mothers’ lifetimes, in asari years, isn’t it? It’s only been 50 mothers since the Protheans ruled the galaxy.”

Samara blinks, tilts her head and considers that. Such a thought makes her life feel—both much smaller and much larger than it had a moment ago. “I suppose you’re right.”

She can hear the smile in Shepard’s voice. “My mom and I used to talk about stuff like that. She—she didn’t  _exactly_  believe in reincarnation, but dad was a scientist. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, you know? And she always said I had an old soul.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that expression before. What—how can you tell?”

Shepard shrugs. “Dunno. Mom always said I was  _destined for greatness_. That my soul’s probably been around since the beginning of the universe, doing good things and fighting the good fight. Mind, this was back when all I wanted to do was make music.” She giggles again, shaking her head. “Mom saw me for who I was more than I did, sometimes, I think. Or at least, who I was going to be.”

“A mother’s intuition,” Samara sighs, smiling when Shepard grins more. “That seems to be something that translates perfectly between our cultures.”

Shepard hums, watching the nebula pass the window, leaning her cheek on the cushions of the couch now. “Immortality is inconceivable to me, and a thousand year lifespan is getting pretty close to immortality.”

“I knew a krogan warlord once that was already pushing 1200 when I met him.”

“Good  _god_.” Sun shakes her head. “I see eternity when I look out at the galaxy like this, but—what do you see, when you already live so long? Do you see the same thing, or do you see—something else?”

“That’s what I find so comforting, I think,” Samara says quietly. “So many things can change in 100, 500, 1000 years planetside, but the  _stars—_ aside from your occasional supernova, they never change. Or at least, I will never live to see them change. It grounds me. Humbles me. Reminds me that my life, though longer than most, is still only a small piece of an infinite universe.”

A small piece of an infinite universe, playing a small part in tandem with a very large, important piece of galactic history—a piece that is currently still sitting cross-legged beside her in fluffy, Blasto-print pajama bottoms.

“…my dad used to have this theory, about the universe,” Sun continues after a beat. “He used to talk about how all the particles and molecules that make up our bodies have been around since the dawn of the universe. Used to say that, maybe, sometimes some of those particles imprint on each other, and every new life we have, they’re drawn to particles that they were near in the beginning.”

“Quantum entanglement,” Samara replies quietly, and Sun frowns, tilting her head.

“Sort of, but not quite. I think it was just his way of explaining cross-species relationships to the preachy old ladies down at the colony diner, to be honest, but…it makes a strange sort of sense. Why all of these things come together so perfectly, in just the way they need to, with just the people who need to be there. Why the people who have come to mean so much to me, particularly the aliens,  _have_  come to mean so much to me. We have so much in common for being completely different lifeforms—who’s to say it’s not because our souls were created together in the beginning, and that they try and find their way back to each other every time we move to a new body?” 

That…makes a lot more sense than Samara had been expecting. Perhaps humans are not as blind and stupid as a lot of people seem to think.

Before she can say anything about this, Shepard lets out a huff of air, shaking her head as she moves to stand. 

“Sorry, didn’t mean to get all— _philosophy_  on you. I came down here to ask if you wanted to watch a vid in,” she pauses to check her omni-tool, “five minutes with me.”

Samara smiles as Shepard rises to her feet, wobbling slightly. “Just you?”

Shepard shrugs. “Well, me and…Kasumi and Kira and Tali and Garrus and Thane and Jacob and Grunt and—”

Samara cuts Shepard off with a laugh. “Sounds like fun. Count me in.”

She looks surprised by that. “Really?”

Samara reaches out and lets Shepard pull her to her feet, squeezing her hand just for a moment before letting go. “Eternity can wait. Perhaps it’s time I started investing in friendship again.”

Shepard tilts her head, so small in her oversized pajamas, and a full five inches shorter than her. “Couldn’t hurt too much. You can always leave whenever you want, anyway.”

Samara smiles and nods. “An excellent point. After you, Shepard.”

Asari do not think like other species…

But maybe they should. At least every once in a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> touch-feely bullshit sorry lmao


	18. Azalea: Shakarian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azalea - _Fragile and Ephemeral Passion_

“Pretty sure people eat off of that, Shepard.”

Sun turned curiously, spoonful of ice cream still in her mouth, to find Garrus stepping down the last step from the hall leading to the battery, flaring his mandibles at her in a grin. She didn’t make any move to get off of the island, crossing her ankles and swinging her legs as he walked over to lean against the counter across from her. Even sitting on top of the island as she was, even slouching as he was now, he was still at least a head taller than her.

Shaking off the sudden warmth flooding her cheeks, she grinned and took another bite of her midnight snack. “People eat over on those tables, Gare. And besides—I’m wearing pants.”

His gaze dropped to her thighs, which were only just barely covered by the ill-fitting soccer shorts she’d found somewhere in the back of her closet—she’d forgotten she’d even bought them, truthfully. They were supposed to be workout shorts, but—well, they worked better as pajamas.

“Is  _that_  what you call those?” he drawled, dragging his gaze up the length of her torso—and lingering on her exposed collarbones (she didn’t normally wear v-necks, but Garrus seemed to like them)—before bringing his eyes back to hers.

She stuck her tongue out at him and turned back to her ice cream. He didn’t move, not even when she made a show of licking the spoon, and finally she laughed lightly. “Can I help you?”

“I’m thinking,” was all he said.

Sun hummed softly. “Anything interesting?”

She laughed when his eyes flashed with annoyance, before he smirked and said, “I’m trying to decide where to put my mouth first.”

Despite the shock of excitement that raced down her spine, she grinned and nodded at the fridge beside him, helping herself to another spoonful of her treat. “Think we’ve got some dextro ice cream in there, unless Tali’s already eaten it.”

All it took for him to be standing right up against her knees was a single step, and then he was looming over her ( _god, he’s so_ tall), hands resting on either side of her hips on the counter as he bent to meet her eyes (and then bending his head a little more, so he was looking up at her with that predatory stare that sent her heart racing). She grinned, spoon still half in her mouth as he sighed, low and deep, subvocals at that rich frequency that stirred up heat in her gut. “Not what I meant.”

Sun leaned forward until her forehead touched his, eyes sliding shut as she hummed and lowered her snack back to her lap. When she opened her eyes again after a second, she found his eyes closed. Tilting her chin to kiss him quickly, she sighed dramatically as she leaned away to put the lid back on the pint of ice cream. “I must really like you,” she mused, “if I’m willing to put away chocolate ice cream for you.”

“I’m flattered,” Garrus answered dryly, grinning at her when she turned her full attention back on him.

Shepard smirked as she brought her cold fingers up to his neck, giggling when he hissed and shrank away from her touch.

“Your fingers are like little icicles,” he grumbled, rubbing at his neck with his hands and pouting when she laughed. His pout faded a little when she uncrossed her ankles only to hook her heels around the back of his hipbones, urging him forward so she could lock her ankles behind his back as her hands came up to fiddle with the soft material of his shirt. His hands landed on her knees, and he slid warm gloveless palms upwards, just underneath the edge of her shorts, stroking his thumbs lightly against the soft skin he found there.

“They’ll warm up in a few minutes if you keep this up,” she teased, sighing as he gripped the backs of her knees and tugged, pulling her closer with another hum. She tightened her legs around his sensitive waist and grinned when he groaned softly, hands tightening on her legs reflexively.

She slid her arms up around his neck, pressing their foreheads together again, and he gave a longer, deeper sigh, fiddling with the hem of her shirt where it rested on her hips. “What do you say we take this somewhere more priv—?”

“Wh— _shit_ , sorry!”

Sun didn’t really have time to process what was happening beyond turning her head and gasping, “Ashley!”

“Shepard!”

There was a pause during which they both just  _looked_  at each other, Sun still half-wrapped around her boyfriend, before Ash cocked her hip, crossed her arms and said, “I thought you said kissing turians wouldn’t be necessary, Skipper.”

“… _shut_   _up_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Fragile and Short-Lived Love_ = We got interrupted in the middle of a little something-something? idk i refused to do angst though lmao


	19. Kingcups and Quince: F!Shali

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kingcup - _Youth, Innocence, Dawn_  
>  Quince - _Temptation_

The first time Tali really processes that she can kiss Kira (and be kissed  _back_ ), it doesn’t feel quite  _real_.

It’s late, and she’s up past lights-out working on the engines because they’re doing something funny when Kira drops by, apparently unable to sleep. Tali’s gaze catches on her loose t-shirt, and the exposed skin on her shoulder where the neck is too big for her, for just a moment too long, and before she knows it she’s accidentally shocked herself.

She yelps, and then Kira’s right there, anxious hands hovering, trying to help but unsure of what to do without causing more harm.

“You alright?” Tali hears her friend ( _girlfriend? Are they there yet?)_  ask nervously, but Tali is still way too distracted to answer.

She’s too close—too close to allow for concentration—and all Tali can think about is that night two weeks ago when they’d spent a solid hour making out in the rec room. She’d caught a nasty cold afterwards, of course, but it’s mostly gone now and… 

Her eyes have caught on Kira’s lips (lips that Tali now knows are as plush and kissable as they look) and she realizes distantly that there’s really no chance of her getting back to work on the engine tonight.

She hasn’t taken any medicine, but she doesn’t care as she reaches up for the clasps on her mask. She just wants to kiss her—she’ll handle whatever allergic reactions follow later.

Kira laughs into her lips when she tilts her chin and kisses her, as her mask clutters noisily to the floor, and Tali finds herself grinning, too. 

The steady pulsing of the drive core matches the pulse of her heartbeat in her eardrums as she presses closer, deepening the kiss much easier than she had the last time, reaching up to wrap her arms around Kira’s shoulders with a hum.

There are no more words to be had for some time afterwards, and when Tali’s sniffles return with a vengeance the next day, she can’t quite find it in herself to regret.

 

* * *

 

The second time (or, technically the third) they kiss, they nearly get caught.

Of course, they’re not exactly hiding, and there’s not  _exactly_  really anything going on (not that they’ve  _truly_  talked about—“ _I’d like to be something more_ ,” isn’t something Tali’s really sure she knows how to translate), but it’s embarrassing all the same.

Quarians don’t have hair, or anything like it. That’s a fact, and part of the reason Tali had originally been worried about how Kira would react to seeing under her mask, but humans  _do_. Humans have lots of hair, and Kira in particular has  _lots and lots_  of hair.

Lots and lots of hair that looks so,  _so_  soft.

So soft that Tali forgets, for a moment, that the ship they’re on isn’t empty, and that, even with Samara out on a mission with Shepard, there’s still plenty of reason the observation deck isn’t the most private of places to hideaway in.

She’d originally invited Kira up for some quiet time, just to talk—maybe to ask about  _what_  this was, exactly—but she gets distracted. Again.

Kira slips her hand into hers as the door slides shut behind them, humming contentedly as she pulls Tali closer, reaching for her other hand and bumping her forehead affectionately against Tali’s mask.

“Did you have something you wanted to talk about, Jitterbug? Or is this just a— _friendly_  visit?” Kira asks, and somehow her eyes seem to land on Tali’s lips, even through the purple haze of her mask.

 _Keelah_.

Tali’s already pushing her back, away from the door and the window and the chairs, fingers tangled through Kira’s many, flexible ones as Kira stumbles backwards, grinning now.

“You’re driving me crazy,” Tali manages just as Kira’s back hits the wall.

Kira smirks.

Tali’s fingers fumble at the latches of her mask, and their teeth clack uncomfortably with the desperation in her gut as she cups Kira’s cheeks in her hands and kisses her soundly.

Kira’s hands settle on her hips, pulling until there’s barely any room between them, and mumbles, “Makes two of us,” into Tali’s mouth.

Her fingers are trembling as she fumbles again with her gloves, hungry for more skin-on-skin contact, tossing them haphazardly to the ground as she reaches back up to touch Kira’s face. A shock of pleasure runs up her spine when Kira groans softly, and as her hands slide up into Kira’s hair (pulling it down from where she’d tied it up as gently as she can), Kira’s hands press into a spot low on her back that makes her whimper as her teeth sink into Tali’s lower lip.

Tali rises up on her toes, pressing closer—closer, closer,  _closer—_ running her hands through mess of dark hair that falls about Kira’s shoulders, and she’s about to make a very embarrassing sound when the door to the observation deck suddenly slides open with a  _whoosh_.

There’s no way for them to break away fast enough to  _not_  get caught making out in the corner of the room, and Tali still isn’t sure she wants anyone else to see her without her mask, so they just—don’t move. 

It’s almost just as thrilling as kissing, standing there, breath mingling as their lips brush each other with every little movement they make. Kira’s hands are tense on her back, and Tali waits for whoever it is to say something—to gasp, maybe—but there’s only an awkward beat of silence before:

“You guys are really lucky Zaeed sent me to leave Samara these flowers and not literally anyone else.”

Kira laughs, tilting her head to the side so she can look at Kasumi around Tali’s hood. “You say that like I’d be embarrassed to be caught making out with my girlfriend.”

Kasumi answers her—something about Mordin and what he said about Garrus to Shepard—but Tali can’t focus on that. 

Kira had called her her girlfriend.

_Girlfriend._

 

* * *

 

When the Reapers finally come for them, Tali hasn’t seen her girlfriend in six months. 

They manage to keep up via email, but only barely, and Kira’s communications are so screened that they only really get away with “ _Miss you”_ s and similar small talk. To anyone on the outside, they’d just look like close friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while—and sometimes Tali wonders if that’s not how Kira wants it.

There’s no way to bring that up, though, after everything falls apart. The Migrant Fleet is careful to stay as hidden as they can from the encroaching Reapers, and then they decide to start that  _damn_  war with the geth—even after she fights tooth and nail against the idea with her newfound position on the Admiralty Board ( _disappointment when she types out a draft to send to Kira, only to change her mind at the last second—both unsure that she’s even_ alive _and afraid to give away their position_ ).

The arrival of the Normandy, and all of its crew, is the closest thing to a miracle Tali’s sure she’s ever seen.

Kira and Shepard are both there, both seemingly fine, if tired, and Tali wants so badly to throw herself into both of their arms—her best friends in the galaxy, both alive and in one piece—but she can’t. She’s an Admiral, and she has to be professional.

That doesn’t stop Kira from covering her hand in both of hers as they shake hands in greeting, and Tali nearly loses the fight to keep herself under control right then and there.

She expects Shepard to call her up to the Captain’s Cabin at some point, as she mills about the War Room, trying to pretend like she doesn’t feel completely out of place on the ship she used to call home, so her heart leaps into her chest in excitement when there’s a familiar crackle over her comms.

The voice that speaks into her ear is not the one she’d expected.

“…Tali?”

She stammers as she hurries to respond, trying to be quiet even when she catches sight of Shepard across the room, bent over the display in the center of the room, speaking with Admiral Raan.

 _Oh_.

“Kira?” she asks quietly, turning away towards the wall.

“Sun said we should—we should have some privacy. I tried to argue, but, well, you know her.” They both laugh a little at that, stiff and nervous. “You don’t have to come, but I’m up in the Captain’s Cabin for the next hour or so if you wanna…catch up. Or something.”

The comm goes dead again, and Tali is already slipping out of the room as quietly as she can.

The ride up to the Captain’s Cabin is even slower than Tali would have expected it to be, but she’s not sure if that’s just the elevator or her nerves. She bounces on the balls of her feet as she waits, heart all the way up in her throat by the time the doors  _finally_  slide open and she’s left stepping out into a little hallway, in front of a closed door.

She steps up to it carefully, counts to ten, and presses on the green circle in the center.

Kira’s standing at the fish tank when the door slides open.

Tali has a few seconds before Kira turns to look at her to drink in her appearance—to notice how her hair is just  _that_  much messier than she remembers it, to notice the new scar spanning from the corner of her left eye and stretching down across the corner of her mouth. It’s still freshly red and deep, but there are no stitches.

“It happened on Earth,” Kira says quietly, when she turns to look at her finally. She smiles a little, the gesture lopsided as she tries to avoid agitating the cut. “Split my face open falling from a broken beam.”

“Ouch,” Tali mumbles, stepping into the room and not stopping until she’s right in front of her. Carefully, she reaches up and touches Kira’s chin, nudging it so she’ll turn her face. “Must’ve been bad.”

“Yeah.” Kira’s voice is dry. Distant. “It was. Stupid, too, because I should have been able to get a barrier up, but—Reaper took me by surprise.”

Tali smiles a little, dropping her hand back to her side. “You know,” she begins softly, dropping her gaze to her hands as she reaches for one of Kira’s, “some people find facial scars attractive.”

Kira snorts. “I don’t care unless you’re one of them.”

Tali laughs, but whatever she might’ve said catches in her throat, and she averts her gaze from Kira’s, looking at the fish now, too.

Kira squeezes her fingers where they’re still holding hands, stepping a little closer. “You okay?”

Tali shakes her head, laughing bitterly and reaching up to touch at her mask,  _this_  close to just taking the damn thing off. “No. No, I’m really not. Seventeen  _million_  lives are riding on me, and I don’t even know if I can save them all.”

Kira lets out a quiet breath. “You sound like Sun. And I’m gonna tell you what I told her, when she came to me—you’ve got this. And whatever you don’t got, well—that’s what I’m here for.”

That makes Tali look back up at her, but Kira’s eyes are on their joined hands. “I’m glad you’re here. You and Shepard. I don’t think I could do this otherwise. I feel like I’m bluffing—trying to convince them that the admiral’s daughter knows what she’s doing.”

“Not the admiral’s daughter,” Kira interrupts immediately. “The Admiral.”

“I know.” Tali sighs. Rolling her neck, she groans and adds, “I know, but this was my father’s fight, not mine. I never wanted this.”

Kira chuckles. “Story of my life. But, hey, if I can do it? So can you.”

“I don’t know about that…”

“Well, I do,” Kira answers almost immediately. “So breathe. We’re gonna win this.”

Tali shakes her head, eyes stinging, and her hand tightens around Kira’s where they’ve still both stubbornly refused to let go. “You can’t know that.”

She laughs, a little warmer now. “Tali, Sun  _cured the genophage._ She’s got the krogan and the turians working together, side-by-side, to fight the Reapers. With us  _and_  your people? We’ve got a pretty damn good chance.”

Tali’s eyes dart between Kira’s, so confident that she actually starts to feel it in her chest, and her mind wanders back to what she’d really wanted to talk about. Squeezing her hand, she tilts her head and asks, “What about  _us_? Have we got—have we got a  _pretty damn good chance_ , too?”

Kira smiles, and her eyes are soft. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember breaking up, Jitterbug. Nothing’s changed—unless you want it to, of course.”

“ _Keelah_ ,” she gasps, half laughing as she shakes her head, “Kira, I’ve wanted nothing but to see you again for  _months_  now. And I haven’t had—I didn’t know if you were—” she cuts off, gesturing at Kira’s face. “Does that hurt too much, or can I—?”

“ _Please_ ,” Kira scoffs, already reaching up to unlatch Tali’s mask. “I could still be actively bleeding and I’d want you to kiss me, Tali.”

And she does, ignoring the tears that slip down her cheeks unbidden at the first touch of lips to lips.

She’s missed her so much.

 

* * *

 

The first time Tali says  _I love you_ , it’s in the middle of a fight— _the_  fight for Rannoch. Sun has just jumped out of the ship to go and fight the Reaper one-on-one, and Garrus is obviously freaking out beside them, but Tali can only look at Kira.

“If this doesn’t work,” she murmurs, leaning close and tangling her fingers through her girlfriend’s. “If we don’t make it…”

“We’re going to make it,” Kira snaps, but there’s something in her eyes that’s not so sure about that.

“ _I love you_ ,” Tali insists, squeezing Kira’s hand as she turns and looks at her, obviously surprised.

“I love you, too,” is all Kira says, leaning in and pressing her forehead to Tali’s mask. 

They don’t say it again until Kira’s leaving her with her arms full of an injured Garrus on Earth. Until she’s turning her back and facing certain death, leaving Tali numb and terrified, unable to follow.

It’s the first thing they say when they’re reunited, weeks later.

 

* * *

 

Kira has trouble adjusting to Rannoch’s day cycle, after everything. 

Tali offers, again and again, to move somewhere else. They can live on the New Citadel, or Earth, or— _anywhere_ , but Kira waves her off every time.

“ _I love you_ ,” she’d say. “ _I don’t need a regular sleep cycle.”_

Tali finally stops offering, but it still stings, every time she wakes up to an empty bed because her love has gotten up before her. Today is no different, and she tries to shake off the little voice in the back of her mind that says her girlfriend has just up and  _left_  as she slides a hand across the empty sheets by her side. 

Her eyes catch on her own skin, light purple and the little flecks of light that Kira claims to love so much— _freckles_  she’d called them.

It’s still strange to see so much of her own skin, but it’s getting more normal as the weeks go on.

The room is dark, but getting lighter, and she debates for the briefest moment before pushing herself up and grabbing her dressing gown off the chair in the corner. Slipping on the silky robe, she pads out of the room to go and find where her girlfriend has gone.

She finds her out back, sitting on the stairs of the back porch, watching the sky and the wind as it makes the desert grass sway. She’s got the throw blanket from the sofa tossed around her shoulders, and Tali smiles a little at the sight as she moves to sit beside her.

“Hey,” Tali greets, laughing a little when Kira immediately raises her arm and wraps part of the blanket around her shoulders, slinging her arm around her neck and leaning in to press a kiss to her cheek.

“Morning, beautiful,” Kira greets, and Tali can feel the words form against her skin.

Tali turns her head until their lips meet, and her girlfriend kisses her firmly, deepening the kiss like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

And maybe it is, she thinks as Kira’s mouth leaves hers to trail a line of wet kisses across her jaw and down her neck. Maybe this is exactly how everything is supposed to be—just her and her girlfriend, kissing as the sun rises ( _her_ sun, on the porch of their home on the home _world_ ).

Any other thoughts she might have had about the situation fade as Kira brings her mouth back to hers.

And they kiss, until the sun is completely above the horizon and Tali’s stomach makes rumbly noises that make Kira snort and break away, giggling.

As they rise to go and scrounge up breakfast, Tali watches the daylight wash across her girlfriend’s skin, watches the sunlight light her eyes up gold, and feels herself fall in love all over again.

All is well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize this prompt was probably an ask for First Time Smut but Kira is ace sooooo


	20. Zinnia: Ashley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zinnia - _I Mourn Your Absence_

When Ashley found out about Shepard—about her being  _alive_  and working for  _Cerberus_  of  _all people_ —it hurt. It hurt a  _lot_.

But not nearly as much as the moment she found out Kira had run off and joined her.

“What do you  _mean_  she’s  _gone_ , Anderson? Where did she go?”

Anderson looked expressly uncomfortable, in his dress blues behind a desk. “I  _mean_ , she requested leave so that she could join her cousin on the Normandy.”

“And you just  _let her_? Just like that?”

He took a deep, slow breath, pressing his hands together. “Chief Williams, I trust Commander Shepard. I believe she has our best interests in mind, and she and Cerberus are doing a hell of a lot more for our missing colonists than the Alliance has been doing. You know it just as well as I do.”

“But  _Cerberus, sir?”_

Anderson stood abruptly, his hands making a rather loud  _smack_  on the wood as he rose out of his seat. “That’s enough, Chief. There’s nothing I can do at this point to bring the Lieutenant-Commander  _or_  the Commander back to the Alliance _—_ unless you want to put out a warrant for their arrest?”

Ashley blanched, and straightened, shaking her head. “…no, sir.”

“I know it hurts,” he continued, moving towards the window that overlooked the Presidium. Clasping his hands behind his back, he sighed softly. “You just have to trust that they’re still the people we knew, and that they’ll get the job done.”

Ashley valiantly managed to bite back the sudden lump in her throat, as she nodded, “Yes, sir.”

“And, Williams. If you want to contact either of them, I’ll send you their secure channel.”

She wasn’t sure if that was what she wanted at all, but she nodded anyway and turned to leave. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

 

* * *

 

As it turned out, Ashley never had to use the email addresses anyway, because the moment she stepped into her apartment, her computer was flashing with the sign of a new message. When she opened it, it read:

 

_Subject: Don’t be mad_

_Ash,_

_I know this looks bad. I do. And I’m sorry you had to find out like this, for what it’s worth, but it has to be this way. This is where I need to be—where I can get the most work done._

_We’re making real progress towards figuring out this thing with the colonies. They’ve already got loads more information than we had, and I think we’re gonna be able to save a lot of lives at this rate._

_And that’s what we’re doing in the Alliance, right? Saving lives?_

_…I know. It’s still Cerberus. For what it’s worth, Sun and I are both upset about that. She’s half convinced they might blow her face open if she doesn’t comply, though, so we’re doing what we can. The crew itself is nice enough, and we’ve got—_ several _aliens on board. It’s not as bad as it could be._

_I just wanted you to know that I didn’t do this because I’m a terrorist or something. I just want to make sure these colonies stop disappearing—and I want to get to know my family._

_I love you. You’re still my sister, even if you’re pissed at me._

— _Kira_  
  
_I am become a name;_  
_For always roaming with a hungry heart_  
_Much have I seen and known – cities of men_  
_And manners, climates, councils, governments,_  
_Myself not least, but honoured of them all –_  
_And drunk delight of battle with my peers,_  
_Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy,_  
_I am a part of all that I have met_

 

Ashley had to bite back a bitter laugh at the last quote—winning her over with flowery words had worked, once upon a time, but now…

She sighed as she typed back her reply, short and precise. She was still hurt, after all.

 

_Subject: RE: Don’t be mad_

_Kira,_

_I can’t say I blame you for standing by her side. You know how I am with my family, after all—and you_ are _my family, no matter what._

_Just stay alive out there, kiddo. I couldn’t bear losing you, too._

_And I love you, too._

__—Ash__  
  
_Death closes all: but something ere the end,_  
_Some work of noble note, may yet be done,_  
_Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods._

She sat and stared at her laptop screen for a long while after that, waiting. For what, she didn’t know _—_ maybe an answer _—_ but nothing ever came.

 

* * *

 

When news arrived about the Bahak System, and Commander Shepard and Lieutenant-Commander Shepard both showed up to face the consequences, chins held high, Ashley couldn’t decide what to do. 

She wanted desperately to see Kira _—_ to see both of them, in truth, but especially Kira _—_ but she couldn’t make herself take those final few steps down to the Detention Center every time she visited Alliance Command, and every time she opened a new email draft, she could never hit send. 

Kaidan didn’t seem to know how to deal with Shepard either, at least. Whenever they met up for beers, she always asked if he’d seen them, and the answer was always a resounding no _—_ that he’d been too busy, or that they’d been somewhere else, or just that he didn’t know what to say. She knew he and Shepard had been good friends, and she knew how much the apparent betrayal had hurt him.

But Kira was her  _sister_ , in a way that Shepard sort of was, but not quite. She and Kira had gone through basic together, had sat up late and gossiped about their lives when they could. Ashley had held Kira through many, many nightmares of what happened on Elysium, held her every time something touched a nerve and it got just slightly too much _—_ until Kira began to grow out of it, anyway. 

They’d been through so much together, right up until Kira’s N7 recommendation came in, and they’d finally had to part ways. 

Seeing her now, after everything, and knowing that she very well may not be the same person she’d come to be so close to? It was _—too much_. Way too much.

But she had to face the music eventually, and that day came at the worst moment possible.

Shepard was wanted by Alliance High Command, for something that only had dread sitting heavily in Ash’s stomach, but Kira wasn’t. While Shepard smiled and passed her and Kaidan by to go on into the boardroom, Kira hung back, tense and anxious, but _—_ looking every bit like the woman she remembered.

“So,” she began after a moment, as Vega and Kaidan introduced themselves, “we’re the same rank now?”

Ashley smiled a little. “Yeah. So it would seem.”

Kira’s eyes were far away. “You didn’t tell me.”

Ash opened her mouth to answer, and then shut it again when she realized she had no real excuse for why she hadn’t shared. “No, I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

Kira shrugged a little, drifting closer to nudge her arm against hers. “It’s alright. Like Sun said, I’m sure you had _ _—__ ”

_BWOOOAAAMMM_

 

* * *

 

It was chaos, and Ash’s ears rang as she unsteadily rose to her feet. There was fire, and a lot of possibly unconscious bodies, but what _—_?

“Lieutenant-Commander. Lieutenant-Commander Williams, come in!”

Shakily, Ashley raised her hand and pressed a button on her omni-tool. “Yes, sir.”

“I can’t raise the Normandy. I need you to find Joker and come pick us up. Shepard and I are going to make our way to the spaceport.”

Grimacing as she looked around and found Vega shoving a piece of rubble off of Kira, whose biotics flickered as he helped her up. She met Kaidan’s gaze from where he’d also managed a barrier across the room, and nodded. “Aye-aye, sir.”

And then they were making their way through the rubble and debris, avoiding fallen beams and trying their best to raise Joker on the comms. 

“He should have been with the Normandy,” Kaidan was saying as they carefully made their way across a particularly shaky beam. “We get to the spaceport, and he’ll probably be ready to g _—_ ”

_BWOOAAAMMM_

“ _AAAGHH!”_

It was like watching in slow-motion, as they all fell heavily to the street below. Kaidan managed a decent barrier around himself and Vega, and Ashley managed to roll on impact, but  _Kira_ …

“Oh, God,” Ashley gasped, half-crawling as she tried to get to where Kira had fallen face-first on the concrete, a pool of blood already forming underneath her head. “Oh,  _God_.”

Kaidan kept up a steady barrier as Vega rushed to their side, helping Ashley ease Kira onto her side and wincing at the amount of blood pouring from the wound on her face. For a second, she was sure she was dead, but then Kira took a shuddering gasp, good eye flying open as she reached out instinctively. 

“I’m here, I’m here,” Ash heard herself say, squeezing Kira’s hands. “You’re okay. We’re gonna _—_ we’re gonna get you out of here, come on. It’s okay.”

“Ash, my  _face_ ,” Kira tried to say, but it came out slurred, and dizzyingly Ashley thought she saw a flash of white beneath all that red on her cheek. “I can’t see, Ashley, where _—_?”

“I’ve got you,” was all Ashley said, wrapping her arms around her and lifting until she was standing again. “You just hold onto me, okay, kiddo? We’ll make it. Make sure you stay awake, though.”

“Right,” Kira mumbled, leaning her unwounded cheek heavily on Ashley’s shoulder. “Stay awake…”

“You sure you don’t want me to _—_?” Vega began, but Ashley just sent him a sharp look.

“I’ve got her. You two just focus on getting us to the Normandy _—and that’s an order_.”

 

* * *

 

“Ouch,  _fuck_ , Ashley,  _Jesus Christ_ _—_!” Kira cursed as Ashley did her absolute best to stitch the wound on her face closed. 

“Hold still, kid, just a few more to go.”

“ _Ow _ _—!”___

Behind them, Shepard hovered anxiously, pacing, straightening her armor as she watched Ashley work. It made her nervous, just a little, but they had work to do still on Mars and they’d be there any minute.

“It’s temporary,” Ashley said quietly, even as Kira hissed. “It’s just to hold until we can get to the Citadel, okay? And…done.”

Kira let out a quiet breath of relief, and Ashley felt her gut twist as a tear slipped down one cheek. “Okay,” she mumbled hoarsely. “Until the Citadel.”

“No sleeping while we’re gone,” Shepard chimed and Kira rolled her eye that Ashley hadn’t put a bandage over.

“I’m literally in so much pain, Sun, I don’t think sleeping is possible.”

Ashley turned just in time to find Shepard rolling her eyes right back at her cousin.

“Still. EDI, keep her awake, okay? Concussions are nasty enough without her accidentally making it worse.”

“Of course, Shepard.”

“Yeah, Commander? We’re coming up on Mars. You’d better get ready to drop if we’re doing this,” said Joker’s voice over the comms. 

Shepard sighed and nodded, turning to leave the med bay. “Be at the shuttle in five, Ash,” she called before the door slid shut again.

Carefully, Ashley leaned in and pressed a kiss to the uninjured side of Kira’s head. “Hang in there, kiddo.”

She snorted. 

“Come back in one piece, Sis. Or else.”

That made Ash smile, just a little. 

“Got it. See you soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _aaaaaand_ then ashley gets beat up by that robot and they both end up in the hospital on the citadel yayyy
> 
> anyway Ashley/Kira BROTP for life


	21. Witch Hazel and Verbena: Ashley & Mordin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Witch Hazel - _A Spell_  
>  Verbena - _Pray For Me_

_Babysitting isn’t so bad_ , they said. 

 _You’ll barely even notice that she’s there_ , they said. 

 _It’ll be fuuuun_ , they said. 

 _Please, Ash, this is important,_ they said.

Where Sun and Garrus got the idea that their newest addition to the family was anything but chaos in turian form, she didn’t know. Sun had promised that she’d listen to her well enough, and that she’d behave herself. That was apparently  _before_  she realized that she was a biotic, and Ashley felt a little bit like she’d been left alone with a kid who just started puberty. 

Except instead of puberty it’s discovering that you can levitate shit with your mind. And instead of being upset or scared, the kid is just having fun trying to move things across the room, no matter how many times she asked her to please not break anything.

“ _Relax_ ,” she’d said, watching a very breakable vase levitate a few inches off the ground. “ _I’ll be careful_.”

 _CRASH_.

“ _Uh. I’ll clean it up_.”

Luckily, Ashley wasn’t alone in her efforts—or at least, she didn’t have to be alone in her efforts. James would show up if she called him, she knew, but as far as the little hellraiser of an apparently biotic turian that was Nox Vakarian-Shepard was concerned (who at 11 was already almost the same height as Ashley herself) she had a feeling she’d have to call in the big leagues.

Wrex laughed when he answered the phone.

“Having problems, Williams?”

She sighed heavily. “I can handle human kids. I can handle asari. I can’t handle turians, apparently.”

“And what makes you think  _I_  can handle a turian any better? Especially since I have so many kids of my own now aft—”

“—yeah, I know, Wrex, but I’m not a biotic and you  _are_.”

“…what does that have to do with anything?”

“Nox, apparently, has just discovered that she has biotic abilities. I don’t know how to deal with this. Please help.”

Wrex laughed again. “Alright, I’ll come over. Getting tired of sitting through meetings anyway. You think you can handle watching my daughter while I talk with the kid?”

A throbbing headache was starting to pound behind Ashley’s eyes as another  _bang_  resounded from somewhere deeper in the house, followed by a panicked sounding, “ _I’m okay!”_

“I’ll manage,” she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Just hurry, please.”

 

* * *

Wrex’s child was much, much easier to take care of, to Ashley’s utter relief. 

She was actually much smaller than she’d been expecting, having not actually seen a baby krogan before. She fit in one of Wrex’s hands, wearing a little pink onesie and taking in her surroundings with wide, red eyes just like Wrex’s. 

He smiled at her as he ducked down to walk through the door, bouncing his arm a little to make the baby giggle delightedly.

“Where’s the little ass-kicker?” he rumbled, looking around the room curiously.

“In her room, I think. I knocked when I heard something fall but she wouldn’t open the door.” She sighed. “I asked her if she was okay with you coming over, and she said, ‘ _Thank you,’_  so I’m hoping that’s a good sign.”

He snorted. “Hm. I’ll see what I can do. Here, take Mordin,” he said, handing the round little krogan to her and smirking when she balked a little at how much she weighed. Such a small baby, and she already had to weigh almost 20 pounds.

Wrex wandered off down the hall then, leaving Ashley and Mordin (Ashley wondered why that name sounded familiar, and why it sounded distinctly  _not_  krogan) alone in the living room. The baby seemed to have finally noticed that Ashley was present, one tiny hand reaching up and landing on her cheek with a gentle  _pap_.

She smiled as Mordin reached up to touch her other cheek, and the baby smiled back, giggling as Ashley swayed on the spot.

“Cutie,” Ash murmured, just as Wrex and Nox reappeared in the hallway.

“We’re going outside to minimize damage,” Wrex announced as Nox pointedly avoided looking at Ashley. “Mordin should be almost ready for a nap. If you want to walk her around a bit, she should go right to sleep. You know where to find me if you need anything.” He patted Nox on her back reassuringly. “C’mon, kid.”

And that was that, and Ash was left in the quiet house alone, still holding Mordin.

 _Walk her around_ , Wrex had said. She could do that.

She wandered off towards the hallway, pausing here and there to let Mordin take in the sights. Garrus and Sun kept a very comfortable home—lots of warm colors and open space for their little seaside cottage. Wandering into the hallway, where sunlight streamed in from the window at one end, she paused in front of a little cubby-like indent in the wall.

She and Mordin took in the shrine she knew Sun kept there, with the pictures of Sun’s parents and a female turian who could only be Garrus’s mother in the very center. There were some other things laying here and there—an old piece of N7 armor caught her eye, just as Mordin reached for a jar full of seashells sitting on one of the upper shelves.

She was about to tell the baby  _no_ , when her omni-tool started ringing. Loudly.

Wincing as the baby frowned, but didn’t cry, she struggled to hit the answer button on the display on her arm.

“Hello?”

“Ash, I am  _so sorry_ ,” came Sun’s worried voice. “I’ll pay you extra for this, I swear.”

“Wha—how did you—?”

“Wrex messaged us,” replied Garrus. “We’re going to cut our holiday short, but the earliest flight we could get back to Palaven is tomorrow morning.”

“Is it normal for turian biotics to discover their powers this young?” Ashley asked curiously, carefully opening the jar and pulling out a seashell to hand to Mordin.

“No,” Garrus sounded concerned. “No, it’s highly unusual, actually. Turian biotics actually typically discover that they’re biotic much later in life than other species.”

Ashley hummed. “Wrex’s baby likes the seashells you have on this shrine in the hallway.”

Sun laughed. “Is it Mordin you’ve got with you?”

“…how did you know that?”

“Mordin’s named after a friend of ours. A salarian—he’s the one that cured the genophage.”

Something tickled the back of her mind. “Was he the salarian you had with you on Horizon that one time?”

“That’s him. Yeah, he—he died on Tuchanka. He was planning to retire after the war. Live somewhere warm and tropical and collect seashells. His last words to me were,  _Would have liked to run tests on the seashells,_ so I’m not surprised the baby likes the seashells.”

“So it’s okay for her to play with them?”

“Ash, look out the window. If I need more seashells, I can just walk outside and get more seashells.”

“…that’s fair.”

Sun laughed again, and Ashley could almost see her shaking her head. “Call us if anything else happens, okay? I’ll call later tonight to talk to Nox.”

“We really appreciate you taking care of her, Ash,” Garrus added.

“Anytime, Vakarian.”

Garrus laughed. “It’s  _Vakarian-Shepard_  now, Williams.”

“Right, right,” she chuckled, readjusting her grip on Mordin as she reached for another seashell. “Enjoy the rest of your night.”

“Bye, Ash.”

The line cut there, and Ashley looked at the baby in her arms curiously, almost as if she were expecting her to suddenly turn into a salarian or something.  _I’m not surprised the baby likes the seashells_ , Sun had said, almost like she’d been expecting it.

Suddenly, standing in front of this shrine of lost loved ones, Ashley felt a little more somber. She almost felt like saying a prayer, but she didn’t know what she wanted to say, so instead she just turned to the baby in her arms and smiled. Propping Mordin up on her hip as best she could, she pulled the jar of shells down and headed back to the living room to spread them out on the carpet and let the baby play while she waited for Wrex to come back inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this probably doesn't fit the prompt at all but my friend suggested "Wrex's first babby and Ashley" and i had to
> 
> anyway [here's](http://galpalaven.tumblr.com/post/164964786963/i-found-a-free-to-use-female-turian-base-and-went) my terrible coloring of what Nox looks like once she gets her marks ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ


	22. Wallflower: F!Shali

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wallflower - _Fidelity in Misfortune or Adversity_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from [these new prompts](http://galpalaven.tumblr.com/post/164923064448/flower-prompts) that I made myself

Tali had never seen Shepard like this— _either_  of them.

Shepard was still shaking in the middle of the floor in the docking bay, face buried in Garrus’ cowl as she sobbed, heart-wrenching, aching sobs. Tali and a few other crew members were hovering anxiously several feet away, wringing their hands, unsure of how to help.

Kira watched the scene with a strange, distant look on her face for a moment before she took a few unsteady steps backwards, turning to head for the elevator without making eye contact with anyone.

“Kira?” Tali tried as she walked past, but the only reaction she got was a passing glance and half a pause in her gait before she was gone, stepping into the elevator and rubbing roughly at her face as the door slid closed.

She glanced back towards where Shepard and Garrus were still curled up together on the floor, then up to where EDI met her gaze, looking as uncomfortable as she’d ever seen the AI. Something had happened on that station, and it had obviously hurt like hell, whatever it was.

She needed to find Kira.

As she stepped into the elevator now, EDI’s voice came over the intercom, quiet and pensive. “The Lieutenant-Commander is currently in the rec room,” she said. “I think perhaps you should check on her.”

“I was going to,” Tali sighed, shifting her weight, waiting for the slower-than-dirt ride to finally end.

“Good.” EDI almost sounded relieved. “What happened up there was not pleasant. She needs you.”

_I’m not so sure about that_ , Tali thought, biting at her lip, but then the elevator dinged and slid open to reveal the crew deck. All that time they spent apart, and Kira’d said she still wanted this, but...six months was still a long time, and they’d yet to get back to the way things were before the Bahak System.

The rec room was surprisingly unlocked when she walked up to it, sliding open in a few heartbeats with a quiet  _swoosh_  when she pressed the green circle in the middle. At first, Tali thought the room was empty, the couches where Kira usually liked to lounge unoccupied, but then she saw the armored figure sitting at the bar, and her heart sank a little lower.

Fiddling with her fingers, Tali took a few cautious steps towards her girlfriend. “...Kira?”

Kira sniffled miserably, but didn’t turn to look at her. “Hey.” She sniffled again, reaching for one of the purple bottles near her on the counter. “Want a drink? Think this one is dextro.”

“No, I think I’m...good.” Tali closed the distance between them, sliding into the bar stool beside her girlfriend, eying the side of her face cautiously. Her heart squeezed when the blue lighting of the shelves behind the bar glistened on the wet trails of tears on Kira’s cheeks. “I came to make sure you were alright.”

“Fine,” Kira croaked, voice cracking. She still wouldn’t look at her. “I’m fine. Sun’s the one that’s upset.”

_Yes, but you’re crying, too,_  Tali thought, frowning.

“I think Garrus has that handled,” Tali murmured lightly. “And...you’re crying.”

“Shit, am I?” Kira laughed bitterly, swiping at her cheeks with her gloved hands. “Sorry.”

Tali bumped her knee against her girlfriend’s under the table, smiling a little when Kira didn’t move away immediately. Or at all, after a few more heartbeats. Carefully, Tali reached over and brushed a stray piece of hair behind her girlfriend’s ear, pausing to wipe at another tear that slid down her cheek as she did.

“...what happened?”

Kira laughed again, but the sound just made Tali’s stomach twist, bitter as it was. Shaking her head, she pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes and sighed shakily, lips trembling a little. “It—It’s  _stupid,_ really. This is—it’s an old wound. A  _healed_  wound. I don’t know why I’m even—” she cut off with a hiccuping gasp, pressing harder into her eyes like she was trying to physically push the tears back in.

“Kira, what happened?” Tali repeated, reaching over to place a hand on her back now, rubbing gently.

She sniffled again. “It—It was—Cerberus had her dad.”

...what?

“We all th-thought that Sun’s dad was killed by the slavers that hit Mindoir but—but  _Cerberus_  had him the  _whole time_. He didn’t even look,” she huffed, dropping her hands to the bar with a loud  _slap_ , making Tali flinch a little. “ _They turned him into a monster_ , Tali. He was barely more than a husk that they set loose on us. And Sun’s  _face—”_ she paused, a haunted look in her eye as she shook her head sadly. “He still had some of his wits about him. He didn’t attack us—just stood there and asked his daughter to kill him. Even said  _please_.”

“ _That’s_...”  _Awful_ , Tali wanted to say, but that felt like an understatement.

“I killed him.” 

Kira still wasn’t looking at her, but Tali watched her eyes harden as she glared at her hands on the table. “Sun couldn’t do it, so I did it. Put a bullet through his temple.”

“You’re upset because you had to kill a family member?” Tali asked, trying to figure out what exactly was causing this distress. 

Kira shook her head, to Tali’s surprise. “I’m upset because her dad and my dad were twins.”

Oh.

_...Oh_.

Tiredly, she looked over at Tali then, finally, and cracked a broken smile. “I told you my dad was an ass, but it still hurt when he died during the Blitz. Hurt because it felt like I let him down, even though I was just 17 when that happened.  _This_ ,” she shook her head and another few tears dripped down her cheeks. “This felt worse. More personal. I know it wasn’t my dad, but he had his face, and as much as I resented the way my dad treated me, I never wanted to...to  _kill_  him, you know? But someone had to and he was—he was suffering.”

“You did the right thing,” Tali replied softly, inching closer to run her fingers along her girlfriend’s cheek again. 

Kira’s eyes darted around her mask, almost as though she could see the face beneath it, and she smiled a little. “He had his face,” she repeated in a whisper, eyes watering, lips trembling as she valiantly tried to hold her smile in place. “He had his  _face,_ Tali. It was like—”

“—like you killed your father, instead of your uncle.”

Kira nodded slowly, an another empty laugh fell from her lips. “Yeah.”

Sighing, Tali finally leaned in all the way, wrapping her arms around her distraught girlfriend as best she could and squeezing, wishing she could just love all the pain away with a few hugs and kisses. Kira was shaking again, as she turned and buried her face in Tali’s shoulder with a quiet sob, and Tali’s heart ached.

_I love you_ , she wanted to say, but couldn’t seem to force the words past her lips. 

“I’ve got you,” Tali eventually mumbled, as Kira readjusted to wrap her arms around Tali as well. “I’ve got you. It’s alright.”

_You’re not alone in this anymore._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *griffin mcelroy voice* OOPS. OH NO. OOPS. WHOOPS. OOPSIE DOODLE.
> 
> sorry for the accidental angst lmao


	23. Hyacinth and Primrose and Jacob's Ladder: Kira

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hyacinth - _Please forgive me_  
>  Primrose - _I can't live without you_  
>  Jacob's Ladder - _Come down/Come back_

When Shepard got back onto the Normandy, she had Ashley thrown over her shoulder, bleeding heavily from cuts all across her face, and Kira’s heart leapt into her throat.

“ _What happened_?” she gasped, struggling to get up off of the cot she’d been lounging on in the med bay. The world spun threateningly at the change in motion, and she stumbled, leaning heavily on the side of the bed. “Sun, what happened to Ashl—?”

“Ashley needs medical attention,” Liara said, interrupting as she bent to try and meet Sun's eyes. “We need to leave the Sol System.”

“I know,” Sun mumbled, glaring. She braced her hands on either side of the cot and dropped her head. “I know, Liara.”

“Where’s Kaidan? What’s going on?”

Kira’s head was starting to throb, as was the fucking huge gash in her face from where she’d smacked it on the concrete just an hour or so ago now. Sun had just looked up at her, opened her mouth to answer, when a voice came over the intercom.

“Hey, Commander? I got a transmission from Admiral Hackett for you. Seems important.”

Sun’s face crumbled, and she rubbed at her eyes roughly. “I’ll be right there. Liara, do what you can for her. EDI, see what you can learn from that _thing_. I’m gonna go take care of this.”

“Of course.”

And then Shepard turned and walked out of the med bay, headed to the war room no doubt.

“You should sit down, Lieutenant,” Liara said quietly after a beat, moving to find some bandages to help stop Ash’s bleeding.

“Not until someone tells me why my best friend is lying on that cot, unconscious and bleeding!” Kira argued, trying her best not to slur. Damn, she really did have a concussion.

The asari just sighed as she set to work on Ashley’s face. “Cerberus was at the Archives,” she said softly, and Kira sat heavily on the edge of her cot again. “They had _that_ ," she gestured to the metal woman James had just set down on one of the other cots. "It grabbed Ash by the helmet and slammed her head into the side of a shuttle several times.”

Oh. 

Kira blinked, settling a little further into her little pile of pillows she’d stolen from a few of the other beds while they were out, staring at her friend’s limp form. That was…

“Is she going to be okay?” Kira heard herself ask.

Liara paused thoughtfully, but didn’t look at her.

“I hope so.”

 

* * *

 

The hospital staff that met them at the Citadel insisted on putting Kira on a stretcher as they wheeled her off to be examined. It felt weird, and kind of dizzying, rolling down the hallway with the lights changing over head. Her eyes throbbed, and her face hurt, and she ended up squeezing her eyes closed just to try and fight off the rolling sense of nausea it caused.

Distantly, she heard James ask, “ _We’re not goin’ with?_ ” just before the doors shut behind them.

The walk to Huerta Memorial was either very short, or Kira must have passed out somewhere on the way—which, judging by the way the doctors seemed a little anxious when they roused her, she assumed that was the correct answer. 

Her translator implant must have been shaken sometime during the fall, she realized hazily, as she tried to understand what the doctors were saying to her—she caught the word ‘fall’ she thought—but all she was processing was that they were definitely…making sounds.

“I can’t…my implant’s not working,” she slurred after a few minutes of this and the salarian face bent over hers lit up with recognition. 

A human face appeared over hers then, vaguely familiar somehow, and she smiled as she said with a sweetly accented voice, “We are going to put you to sleep now, Lieutenant-Commander Shepard. You will be alright.”

 

* * *

 

They wouldn’t let Kira get out of bed for several  _days_  after she woke up from whatever they did. Her cut had cleaner stitches in it, and her head wasn’t throbbing with every beat of her heart anymore, but she was still dizzy when she tried to sit up, too fast.

She didn’t care.

Ash was apparently in a room across the hall, she found out after pestering the nurses enough. She was unconscious, as she had been since she arrived, but the prognosis was currently that she was on the path to recovery. Probably.

… _Probably_.

It was on the third day that Kira was about to go a little nuts, ready to fight the nurses without the biotic amps they’d removed upon arrival—human-to-salarian fisticuffs, she’d take down that hamster-voiced doctor no  _problem_. She was about to try and make a break for it, actually, when her door slid open and a new figure appeared, holding a bouquet of flowers and smiling tentatively.

“…Kaidan?” Kira frowned as he stepped further into the room. He wasn’t wearing fatigues for once, which was strange because she didn’t know he owned other clothes. “What are you…?”

“I came to check on you and Ash,” he said easily, shrugging as he crossed the room to her side. He pulled the dried, ugly flowers out of the vase on her bedside table and replaced them with the fresh ones—Thessian  _demael_ , if she remembered anything from her year in C-Sec.

“ _You_  came to check on  _me_?”

He laughed at that. “I know, I know. We haven’t always been on the best terms,” he said, pulling up a stool to sit in, “but Shepard is worried, and I promised I’d check on you both.”

Kira rolled her eyes, smiling as much as she dared without tearing her stitches. “That makes more sense.”

“That, and I was genuinely worried about you. You didn’t see the blood and the—it was bad, Sh-Shepard,” he replied softly, and Kira chuckled when he still stumbled over her last name.

“You can call me Kira if you want, Kaidan.”

He grinned. “Thanks, I’m just—part of me is still stuck in the  _Shepard is dead_  mindset, you know?”

Kira snorted. “Yeah, tell me about it. I’d be in the same boat if I hadn’t spent so much time with her over the past like year and a half.”

They fell into a tense silence then, neither of them really sure how to talk to each other, even now. Kira fixed her eyes on a screw in the wall, and Kaidan started bouncing his leg, crossing his arms in the universal  _I’m uncomfortable_  posture.

Eventually, Kira sighed. “You think you could get me in to see Ash?”

He chuckled. “I think I can manage.”

 

* * *

 

Kira slipped into Ashley’s room as sneakily as she could in her hospital clothes, biting back a laugh as Kaidan started asking one of the nearby doctors a bunch of really odd questions about his biotic amps. She snickered as she caught, “Does it, uh, have anything to do with…you know… _performance_?” just as the door slid closed behind her.

When she turned to face Ash, whatever good spirits she’d been in faded away. Ashley’s face was covered in bruises, swollen and misshapen even with whatever medication she was sure the doctors were pumping into her through that IV in her arm. Tentatively, because she wasn’t sure how to deal with hospital visits like this, she grabbed one of the doctor’s stools and dragged it closer to the bed, perching on it carefully, running her eyes across her friend’s injured face.

It hit her, all at once, watching the delicate rise and fall of Ashley’s chest beneath the thin hospital sheet.

The world was ending.

Her cheeks started to burn, eyes watering as she looked beyond Ashley and out the window at the Presidium. Earth had been…and she had yet to hear from her mother, she realized suddenly. And Shepard was who knew where at the moment, the force of change actively moving the war effort along because the Council probably wasn’t doing a damn thing to help the people getting hit. And where was her  _girlfriend_? She hadn’t spoken to Tali in weeks—who knew if the Migrant Fleet was still a thing or not?

And Ash…

She reached forward after a moment, tears slipping down her cheeks as she touched Ashley’s hand, smiling a little at the warmth it radiated. 

At least someone she cared about was alive and with her, injured though she was.

“I’m sorry,” Kira said after a moment, watching Ashley’s sleeping face. “I’m sorry we fought for so long about—about what happened with Cerberus. You were right, but I just…I had to go. I had to help, and it was worth it, I think. We delayed the invasion by six months, but that wasn’t…” Kira almost wanted to say it wasn’t worth it, but that wasn’t true.

“You had every right to be mad at me. I’d have been mad, too, probably. But we need to move past that now, okay? Ash, the world is ending. I need—I need  _you_. I need my sister back. I can’t,” she paused, hiccuping and shaking her head. “I can’t do this without you, Ash. Please come back. Please be  _okay_.”

She squeezed Ashley’s hand, just as the door behind her slid open. “Get better soon, okay? For me. Please.”

Kira turned to face the doctor, only to find a familiar face standing in the doorway. Dr. Chakwas smiled warmly, stepping into the room to touch gently at Kira’s injured face. 

“They told me you took a bad fall, but this isn’t quite what I was expecting,” she said, laughing softly.

“Yeah well,” Kira rasped, trying to smile through her tears. “You know us Shepards. Go big or go home.”

That made her pause, and after a moment she dropped her hand to Kira’s shoulder. “The Lieutenant-Commander is going to be  _fine_ , Shepard. She’s got the best care on the Citadel, and she’s already in stable condition.”

Kira sniffled, and the doctor chuckled.

“You should rest, Shepard, before the other Shepard finds out you’ve been disobeying the doctors.”

Kira nodded blearily. Her head throbbed, and her heart ached—for Sun, for her mom, for Tali, for Ash. 

Maybe a nap wouldn’t hurt anything, here at the end of days. Nothing she could do sitting here anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @ the person that requested this: you're a JERK person


	24. Umbrella Sedge: Hannah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Umbrella Sedge - _Home_

The word  _home_  had no real meaning to Hannah Shepard. 

Even before she’d joined the Alliance, before she’d gotten married, she’d never had a place she could accurately describe as a  _home_. There were apartments, sure. Couches. Relatively dry benches in the park. She couldn’t remember what it was like to have somewhere to come back to—couldn’t remember if she’d  _ever_  had anything permanent, for that matter.

When she married Jae, things got better. She had a job, and a family that loved her (Jae’s sister-in-law, also conveniently named Hana, took right to her—her and her daughter). They were happy, for a little while, but it still didn’t feel like home. 

As a member of the Alliance, she and Jae were both posted on space stations more often than they were on colonies, though that was a preference of theirs rather than something unfortunate. The fact that her daughter was even born on Earth at all was a small miracle, because they’d only been there on a layover when she went into labor.

The closest Hannah ever got to  _home_  was whenever she was with Kira, she realized after a while. If she had to be away for a mission, she felt like a piece of her was missing, only to be filled back in whenever she had her daughter within arms’ reach again. She loved her daughter, wanted to be the best mother she could be for the sweet little girl that followed her around when she was just barely learning to walk babbling, “ _Umma, Umma_!”

She and Jae fought, as the years went by, and Kira grew more and more closed off the older she got as a result— _home_  had once again lost its meaning. 

Hannah hated herself for the relief that settled into her chest after Elysium, curled up with her daughter sleeping in her lap (hiccuping breaths in her sleep all that was left of her hysterics after the fight had been over), clutching her husband’s dog tags in one fist. She’d loved him, once upon a time, but things had been…

Well, they'd been.

When Kira joined the Alliance, Hannah stopped trying to find home, and just let herself  _be_. Let herself enjoy space travel, enjoy the perks of being a Captain with her own ship. Let herself enjoy the downtime between relays, the comforting boredom of routine. She was good at her job, and she spoke to her daughter regularly—this was as good as she needed her life to be. Other captains she knew were vying for the Admiral’s Star, and she could have been as well, but she was happy where she was. She didn’t need anything else.

She especially didn’t need anything else when her daughter made N7, and her niece—looking older and harder than the last time she’d seen her when she was 15—became the first human Spectre. Just being a Shepard now meant she received special treatment, whether she wanted it or not.

After the Battle of the Citadel, and the subsequent funeral a month later for  _Commander Shepard_ , Hannah started to wonder if maybe they were cursed. Sun’s family had been lost on Mindoir, and she’d lost her own husband on Elysium. Her daughter had lost some of herself that day as well—she wondered if the name Shepard carried more weight than it was worth, if they were all doomed to a horrific death, one way or another. 

A morbid thought, but she’d never been the happiest person.

Time passed, though, and stranger things started happening. The SSV Washington (her pride and joy) was one of the few frigates stationed out near the Terminus Systems—mostly as a precaution, but nonetheless, she tended to hear things about what was happening to the human colonies out there. Troubling things. Ghost stories and fairy tales come to life.

She tried, once, asking Hackett to  _do_  something, shortly after Ferris Fields just  _vanished_  but she was met with nothing but a wall of paperwork and a  _maybe_. It was annoying, it was troubling, and she was dying for the days when she was younger and could just  _go_ without worrying about what would happen to the Alliance if she got caught. If she could just go rogue like she wanted, but…

She got an email from her daughter, shortly after Kira made a trip out to Horizon. It read:

 

_Subject: Leave of Absence_

_Mama,_

_I just wanted to write you before anyone could say something to you about me. I’ve taken another leave of absence—no, I’m not back with C-Sec. I’m with someone who’s working on this colony thing, chasing down the people responsible. I’m doing something good, Mama. I swear._

_I just wanted you to hear it from me that I’d left, and that I’m okay. I’m with someone I know you’d trust. I can’t say more than that on an unsecure channel, but just…know that I’m okay._

_I love you._

— _Kira_

And that was the last she heard from her daughter, for a long while. She worried, and fretted, and asked around, but all she could get out of anyone were rumors and hearsay. Something about The Collectors and, strangely, Commander Shepard.

When the Bahak System was destroyed, and Anderson called her about the consequences, she wasn’t sure what to feel. It was almost funny, thinking back to what had happened at Torfan, and  _now_  Commander Shepard and her daughter had, somehow, beat her record for brutality there. She wondered if it was just some sort of weird belayed payback to the batarians for—everything that had happened, until Kira called her.

“Mama, we didn’t—I tried, Mama, I  _tried_!  _We_  tried but we just—we—it—” she sobbed into the phone, and her heart sank. “I’m  _sorry_.”

“…I’m coming to Earth,” Hannah said after a beat, and Kira sniffled into microphone.

She spent a full month on Earth, took an official leave of absence and everything, just…getting to know her child again. It had been so long since they’d seen each other for longer than a few days, and they had so much to catch up on after everything Kira went through with the Collectors, and with C-Sec even before that. 

The Alliance Detention Center still felt like, well, a  _detention center_ , but spending time with her daughter again almost felt like…not home, but close. 

She met Thane on her way back to the Citadel, at the spaceport in London. They literally ran into each other, a cliche meeting if she’d ever seen one, but she liked it. She liked him, when they got to speak longer once she ran into him again on the Citadel (without the actual physical collision this time). They went for drinks, and Hannah felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time.

Attraction. To another person.

Of course, she’d had passing attractions, but she’d been  _so_  busy with being a Captain and everything since the Skyllian Blitz that she hadn’t had time to think about. Stuff.

Well, she had time to  _think_  about it but  _acting_  on it was an entirely different story. And she’d been perfectly fine flying solo, anyway, but…

But there was just something about this man, and she was coming up on 47 soon. Maybe it was time to try getting back into the dating business. 

The Reaper War made it impossible to really try that, in the end. They talked, as often as she dared, but there wasn’t much she could do to get time to see him. She was busy with the Crucible, and he was sick, so the most they could do was talk.

And talk. And talk. And talk.

God, it’d been so long since she could just  _talk_  to a man—to  _anyone_  really—it was exhilarating. She loved it. It was fun and flirty and distantly familiar. She’d been so young when she got married, and had been married for so long that she’d never gotten to experience much of this—this— _this_.

She felt about 16 again, laying in her bed and giggling sleepily with Thane over the phone about this and that. They talked about their kids, their families. He told her stories in that  _voice_ , turning murder and assassination into poetry as he spoke. She told him about her days on Earth, which she hadn’t told  _anyone_  since Jae, and he listened.

The first time she kissed him, she had the absurd urge to pop her heel like in all those old Hollywood romance vids.

They spent one night together—a lovely, wonderful night, during which she laughed more than she could remember laughing in the past 20 years (though, that could have been the hallucinogen at work there). One night to treasure until the war was over.

One night to remember when her daughter called her crying about her friend, Thane, and a coma.

She didn’t come to visit him with the war raging, but she thought of him often, in between thinking of her daughter and her niece on the front lines.

And when it turned out that he survived—that so  _many_  of the people she cared for survived, more or less in one piece even—she couldn’t quite believe her luck. Couldn’t quite believe it still when he wanted to see her again, wanted to give  _them_  a try.

When they bought a house in New Mexico, it hit her that this was real. 

It freaked her out a bit, how happy she was with him. How sweet he was to her, and how unused to it she was—near the end of his life, she and Jae had been fighting almost constantly. Thane cooked for her, kissed her for no reason, rubbed her shoulders when she seemed even a little sore. She’d never been treated so well by a man, if she were being honest.

The first time Thane met Kira, in the context of, “Hello, I’m dating your mother,” Kira had, as a surprise, also brought her new girlfriend. To say that the evening was awkward, with so many new relationships out in the open (well, mostly new—Hannah knew  _about_  Tali, but she’d yet to properly meet her), would have been an understatement. 

Tali, bless her heart, thought it was funny, and in fact kept the conversation going throughout the evening while Kira and Kolyat both sulked, and Thane pointedly avoided looking directly at her daughter. 

When their home was finally empty again at the end of that weekend, Hannah wasn’t sure how to feel. It certainly hadn’t gone as planned.

“They just need time,” Thane said one evening, coming up behind her to kiss the back of her neck. “Everything will be fine.”

And he was right, of course, but she resented him for it a little. 

Just a little, though.

It wasn’t until they got together for Christmas later that year that everything really clicked into place. They had Kolyat over again (who still lived on the Citadel through all of its rebuilding), and Kira and Tali, too (living on Rannoch now, in a prefab as they waited for their house to be finished). Everyone spent the early part of the evening in the kitchen, Tali teaching Hannah to cook dextro food for future reference, and then they had a surprisingly pleasant night after that. 

When everyone retired to bed (Kolyat on the sofa in the living room, Kira and Tali in the guest room, and Hannah and Thane in their own bed), Hannah had the strangest feeling of contentment she’d ever experienced. It felt like…she didn’t know, but it felt good.

She woke early the next morning, left Thane dozing peacefully on the bed beside her, his service puppy (affectionately named  _Noodles,_ after the first real meal they ate in their new house) curled up by his side, as she wandered out to see about starting breakfast. She was almost in the kitchen when she registered the laughter ringing through the house.

“Oh, come  _on_ ,  _baby brother_. I just want to know your girlfriend is treating you right.”

“She’s  _fine_. Will you  _drop it_? And  _stop_  calling me that! Our parents aren’t married!”

“I heard she was studying music, right? How’s that going for her?”

“How the  _hell—?”_

Tali interrupted them. “Shepard’s ex-girlfriend works as a professor at Auxua part-time.”

Hannah chuckled as she heard Kolyat give a long-suffering sigh. “Of course,” he groaned.

She peeked around the side of the door, pulling her robe a little tighter around her shoulders to see her—her family where they were standing in the kitchen. Kira was sitting at the kitchen table with her girlfriend sitting in her lap, helmet off as she munched on some kind of breakfast bar. Kira’s chin was resting on her shoulder and she was laughing as Kolyat shook his head where he was standing at the stove, apparently cooking everyone breakfast.

The strange feeling was back again, and only got stronger when she heard quiet footsteps behind her, and a cool pair of arms slid around her waist as a furry bundle of joy zoomed past her legs and into the kitchen (to a joyous cry of “ _Noodles!!_ ” from her daughter and her girlfriend).

“Are they still getting along?” Thane murmured quietly into her ear, warm breath washing over her neck.

“Yes, I…” her voice cracked, and her eyes stung a little, watching the happy little scene.

“…are you alright,  _siha_?”

Tilting her head to lean back against her boyfriend, she sighed softly, wiping at the tear that slipped down her cheek. “I’m happy,” she breathed. “That’s all.”

 _I’m home_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all should have known this was gonna turn into Thane/Hannah
> 
> PS: Kolyat's girlfriend is a reference to @[thedandiesoflions](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thedandiestoflions/pseuds/thedandiestoflions)'s OC Indigo (and you should all definitely go check out her fic [All Things Worth Keeping](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6602002/chapters/15104146) because it's fantastic.) 
> 
> PPS: I hope you don't mind the reference!


	25. Gardenia: Tali

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gardenia - _Secret Love_

Tali had never been the best liar, especially to her friends. 

If she’d ever had a crush, or if she’d done something wrong, or  _anything_ , they always managed to figure it out. She could never lie convincingly enough to get them to drop it—her voice usually gave her away, and if not that, then her body language did the rest.

Even with them all living on separate ships now, Zala being the only one to join her on the Neema, they somehow found a way to pester her incessantly the second they sniffed out the possibility of her having a secret alien boyfriend ( _hah_ ) out beyond the Fleet. The first few times they’d asked why she was acting so weird, she’d chalked it up to being tired from her adventures on the Normandy.

That only worked for so long, though, and within a few weeks, Raela had somehow managed to hack Tali’s communications enough to dig up a stupid poem she’d forgotten to delete after downloading months and months ago.

“ _If I thought for just one moment, that this would be my last breath,”_ Raela read dramatically from her omni-tool, voice a breathless whimper, just as Nora slid into the booth beside Tali.

“ _Raela_ ,” Tali groaned, sliding a little lower in her seat. Maybe this lunch wasn’t the best idea. “Please.”

Raela’s eyes crinkled behind her pink face mask. She continued, skipping to the last lines, clasping a hand to her chest as she read.

“ _If I thought for just one moment that your touch would be the last I’d feel,  
I’d embrace you and know that this has all been real.”_

Zala chuckled from her seat beside Raela, pulling her straw from her mask with a sigh. “What is that? Love poetry?”

“Sounds like it to  _me_ ,” Raela giggled, turning her omni-tool display off and leaning across the table towards where Tali was trying to disappear into the well-worn cushions she was sitting on. “Tali’s got a  _boyfriend_.”

“Really?” Nora’s eyes turned to hers curiously, and Tali was profusely grateful for the hazy coloring of her mask, hiding her furiously blushing cheeks from her nosy friends.

“I  _don’t_.”

That…wasn’t actually a lie, at least, but it still came out a touch too defensive. Her friends all leaned in a little closer as she rolled her eyes towards the ceiling and prayed they’d give it up soon.

“Are you  _sure_?” Raela hedged, and someone nudged her leg under the table.

“I’m sure.”

“’Cuz this email here—” Raela began, tapping at her omni-tool again, only to have Zala elbow her sharply in the ribs. “ _Ow!”_

“Leave her be, Rae. This is the first time she’s come down from talks with Han’Gerrel in what feels like weeks. Let’s just enjoy being together again, yeah?”

Tali sighed quietly, glad for Zala’s interference, only to wince when Nora interrupted with, “I don’t know. I’m curious where she’d have found another quarian to date outside the Flotilla.”

“It’s not a  _quarian_ , obviously,” Raela laughed. “She’s dating an alien.”

“ _Keelah_ ,” Tali groaned, dropping her head into her hands. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed to be dating a human, and a human woman at that (Nora’d been a steady relationship with a girl on the Tonbay since she got back from her Pilgrimage—or so she’d heard), it was just that she wasn’t sure they were even still dating at all. Or that Kira wanted anyone else to know outside of the Normandy crew.

 _And,_ on top of that, it was none of their business anyway.  _Bosh’tets._

Zala giggled behind the green of her face mask, as she nudged Raela again. “Remind me again, which of us had a ‘little black book’ of hookups after they got back from Pilgrimage, Raela? I don’t think you have any room to pick on Tali for a relationship she may or may not have.”

Raela shrugged. “I’m not ashamed of anything I did on Pilgrimage. And, come on, Tali has  _never_  had an actual relationship all these years we’ve known her. Even  _you_  dated that… _Meek_  guy back when we were teenagers. You telling me you aren’t even a little curious, Zee?”

Zala sniffed. “ _Meelo_ was his name, Raela. Meelo. And curious or not, I respect our friend’s  _privacy_. If she wanted us to know she was in a relationship, she’d tell us.”

“ _Thank you,_ Zala,” Tali sighed, just as her omni-tool dinged with a new message.

 _KShep59_ :  _hey! you free? i miss you :/ being grounded sucks with you so far away_

Tali smiled a little, aware that her friends were now watching her as she typed a response.

_tali-zorah: not at the moment. having lunch with my friends right now, but i can get on vid comm later if you want_

Kira’s response was quick to come.

_KShep59: oh yeah? tell them i said hi!!!_

_tali-zorah: they’ve been asking about you actually. is it ok for me to tell them about us?_

Tali sighed heavily, waiting for an answer that took a bit longer than the others had. She could still feel her friends staring, but stubbornly refused to look at any of them as she waited for her chat box to ring finally.

_KShep59: only if you want to. i don’t mind either way!_

_tali-zorah: okay <3_

_KShep59: <333_

Smiling as she closed the display, heart a little lighter after hearing from her girl again after about a week now, she braced her elbows on the table and sighed. “Okay, fine, I’ll tell you. There’s this human…”

All three of her friends seemed to bounce in place a little.

“A human! Is he handsome?”

“Is he nice?”

“Nevermind  _that_. Is he buff? How’s his ass?”

Tali grinned, shaking her head a little at Raela’s last question and drawing out the tension a little before she said, “ _She_  is wonderful.” Beside her, she could feel Nora’s entire being light up, and her smile widened. “Her name is Kira, and she’s very strong and sweet.”

“…And her ass?” Raela asked again, and Tali rolled her eyes, cheeks heating up again.

“It’s…well-sculpted.”

Her friends burst into giggles at that, before they started firing another round of questions at her, faster than she could catch at once. They wanted to know how they met, how long they’d been dating, who asked who out—as Tali settled in for what would apparently be a long afternoon, she couldn’t help but smile.

It was nice, being able to tell people she had a girlfriend. 

She hoped she could keep telling people that for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dunno and I just made up all three of those OCs on the spot but I already love them. they will reappear definitely.
> 
>  **Zala’Vael vas Neema nar Rayya:** Tali’s best friend and the older sister of Lia’Vael from Mass Effect 2, she specializes in social work (ie taking care of wedding certificates and birth requests and stuff like that)  
>  **Nora’Yeel vas Tonbay nar Rayya:** Nora’s a botanist, working to help the Flotilla feed its residents  
>  **Raela’Haedor vas Moreh nar Rayya:** Raela is nosy and has a very small personal bubble, but she’s a technological genius and works closely with Admiral Daro’Xen on researching ways to bring the geth back under quarian control


	26. Rocket: Wrex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rocket - _Rivalry_

Wrex wouldn’t call his relationship with Garrus Vakarian a  _rivalry_  by any means. 

At least, not at first. 

In fact, their relationship in the cargo bay of the SR-1 was nothing more than shipmates who existed in the same general area for quite some time, until Shepard took them on a mission together and something shifted.

It was strange, the subtle hint of arrogance in the turian’s step and smirk as he took down another geth with his sniper rifle. It itched at something in Wrex’s chest, even when it was directed more at Shepard (who just shook her head and smiled) than him—made him want to wipe that look off his face, but he knew Shepard would never stand for crewmates fighting when they were supposed to be working together.

So, he did the next best thing. He challenged the little stinking pyjak to a  _kill-off_. Whoever killed the greatest number of geth, won.

Garrus laughed when he brought it up, but agreed to the bet.

And thus started the game.

It continued throughout their missions, whenever they went out on them together. It made what might normally be a boring mission a little more fun, and before he really knew what had happened, he almost considered Garrus a friend.

Almost.

After Shepard returned from the dead a few years after Saren, she showed up on Tuchanka with Garrus in tow—Garrus looking a little worse for wear, with half of his face looking like it had been blown off. He didn’t get a chance to ask before they were off again, but he did notice that Garrus stuck just that much closer to Shepard’s side as they walked.

Ahh, to be young and foolish again. Perhaps then he’d have more fun things to do than argue with stubborn idiots all day long.

Part of him then remembered briefly the arguments Shepard had often had with the Council—arguments he’d sometimes gotten to hear recaps of when she stormed down to the cargo bay to punch the closest punching bag and complain to herself about  _stubborn bastards—_ and he shook his head. 

Perhaps not.

His rivalry with Garrus had never truly ended, and when he got to stay on the Normandy again for a bit about a year later, they laughed about it over drinks. Garrus said he was sorry for not having been keeping track of all the kills he’d made since Wrex had left, and Wrex laughed and said, good-naturedly, “All the sitting and arguing I’ve been doing, Vakarian, and I’m sure you’re winning right now anyway.”

The turian just chuckled again, and Wrex watched him swirl his brandy a few times out of the corner of his eye.

And then his gaze caught on something, just above Garrus’s collar on his neck.

“…did someone punch you in the throat?” he asked, and Garrus almost looked— _startled_.

Self-consciously reaching up to cup the side of his neck, he laughed nervously. “Probably. I don’t remember it, but—”

“—is that a  _bite mark_?” Had Garrus been stupid enough to let one of those Husk things get on top of him? Or—?

It hit Wrex like a tomkah running at full speed when he realized what that actually was, his mind providing him flashes of all the little moments he’d thought were weird since Shepard showed up on his doorstep a year ago.

Garrus standing a little to close to her while wandering around the Urdnot Camp. Shepard idly touching at Garrus’ back when she passed him by. Shepard subtly reaching for his hand while they were talking in the kitchen, only to pause at the last second and drop it.

“ _You’re sleeping with Shepard_!” Wrex gasped, looking at Garrus for confirmation only to find his eyes elsewhere. He smiled a little. “You  _are_  sleeping with her, aren’t you?”

Garrus reached up and scratched at his mandible. “Keep your voice down, Wrex. I’d rather not the entire crew know what’s going on with us.”

Joker’s voice interrupted whatever Wrex was going to say. 

“Arriving at Tuchanka in approximately 20 minutes. Everyone get ready—we’ve already got Reaper signatures on the scanner.”

“…up for another friendly bet?” Garrus asked idly, looking back over at Wrex and smirking, his smile lopsided from the scarring.

Wrex grinned. “First one to drop a Reaper buys drinks?”

Garrus smiled. “You’re on, old man.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don’t know why this turned into shakarian in the middle but im too tired to fix it so. take it


	27. Viscaria: Shakarian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viscaria - _Dance With Me_

“Shepard?”

“Yes, Garrus?” Shepard grunted, balancing as precariously as she dared with the warm tingle of alcohol in her fingertips, trying to straighten the light fixture in the kitchen area. The chair she was standing on wobbled dangerously as she rose up on her tip-toes, mentally cursing her stupid, 5′3″ body.

A beat passed, and then two large, warm hands settled steadily over her hips. “What are you doing?”

She sighed, pouting a little as her 7 foot tall boyfriend reached up and easily straightened the chandelier. “Grunt hit his head on this earlier and it was bugging me. What are you up to?”

“People have started falling asleep for the night,” he sighed, hands sliding around her hips a little further as he buried his nose in her hair. “So I came to see you.”

“Any of the bedrooms left open?” Sun asked softly, leaning back into his arms with a quiet groan. She was tired, but Garrus’  _hands_ …

He nipped lightly at her earlobe with his mouth plates. “One.”

She hummed, turning on the chair carefully to wrap her arms around his neck, pressing her forehead to his and grinning. “Is it the one with the hot tub?”

Garrus flicked his mandibles at her, nodding a little. “That’s the one.”

She kissed him then, softly and firmly, smiling into his mouth as his hands slid up her back, one sliding into her hair as he leaned in closer. Something slow started to play on the radio then, and Garrus laughed into her lips, turning to glance at where Glyph was hovering in the living room, still playing the music even as a few people dozed on the couches.

While he had his head turned, Sun trailed her lips along his scarred mandible, exhaling warmth against his skin and listening to the resounding hum of contentment he gave in return. Hesitantly, slowly, the hand he had resting on her back slid up her side, up her arm to grasp her hand and pull it away from the back of his head, holding it like he was about to start the tango again.

Warmth flooded her stomach at the memory, his hand at the small of her back, spinning and laughing together on the dance floor. He’d been surprised she could keep up, just as she’d been surprised at his dancing, but they’d ended up having an even better night that evening. 

Though, he  _had_  gotten a little annoyed when she kept pretending to forget his name.

“Dance with me?”

His voice was barely above a whisper, and Sun could hear more of his subvocals (way down in the bass register now) than his actual voice. She pulled away, butterflies in her stomach, to look up at her boyfriend and his blue, blue eyes.

She took a second to truly catalogue their position—standing in the kitchen, the aftermath of the party she’d thrown strewn about the counter and floor around them. She was still standing on the chair she’d been using to reach the lights, putting them nearly eye-to-eye with each other.

“Here?” she asked, laughing lightly even as he squeezed at her hand.

“You kept up pretty well at the casino the other night,” he replied, voice still low and soft.

She snorted. “I’m glad you finally believe me about the lessons I took in high school.”

The music swelled, and Garrus began to sway on the spot, eyes as soft as she’d seen them yet. “Our song is playing.”

Sun paused, rolling her eyes upward and listening intently. “…you really want this cheesy love song to be our song, Gare?”

“Is there something else you’d prefer?” he asked, leaning in and resting his forehead against hers, and both of their eyes slid shut.

The alcohol was still swimming in her mind as they swayed on the spot, and eventually she shrugged. She couldn’t remember any other songs at the moment, and Etta James was good enough for now.

They stood like that for a long while, swaying and kissing every so often in between affectionate forehead nudges. Their hands began to drift as the song faded, and Sun’s eyes rolled back a little as he tugged at her hair, baring her throat to him as he dragged his mouth against her jugular, inhaling deeply.

“Bed?” she gasped as he nipped lightly.

She felt his mandibles shift against her skin as he grinned.

“Bed.”

 

* * *

 

 

When she woke the next morning, head pounding but wrapped up in silk sheets with her boyfriend half curled around her, she couldn’t help but smile.

They talked in hushed whispers for a few moments, still somewhat lost in the afterglow as she slid out from under the blankets to go and get dressed—

—only to end up running back to the bed, face burning as she hurried to get covered again.

“Sun?” Garrus asked, subvocals pitched up in concern.

She kicked at his thigh with her bare foot, lips twitching when he made an indignant sound.

“ _Javik is in the bathroom!”_  she hissed.

“He’s  _what_?!”

She groaned, burying her face in her pillow. “How long do you think he’s been there?” she whined, muffled. “Didn’t we lock the door? How  _drunk_  were we?”

Sun felt the mattress shift as Garrus propped himself up on an elbow, looking down at her and sighing. “I don’t—”

“ _Take care of it_ ,” she growled, turning her head to glare at her boyfriend.

“Me?”

“ _Yes_.”

Garrus opened his mouth like he was going to argue, but eventually he just sighed again and shook his head, sitting up and bending over the edge of the bed to hunt for his pants.

She tried not to listen to the conversation the men were having in the doorless bathroom when he went after him, sitting up in bed and pulling the sheets up to her chin, hiding her face and wondering how the hell she was going to be able to ever speak to Javik again.

_Click._

“Oh, thats another good one,” came a familiar, disembodied voice, Sun peeked between her fingers as Garrus half-carried Javik from the room, only to find Kasumi in the corner, waving.

“Kasumi, if you have anything in that damn omni-tool of Garrus and me—” Sun began, glaring, only for Kasumi to giggle and cross the room to her side.

“Oh, I don’t know, Shepard. This one is pretty cute.”

She held her arm out for Sun to see, and Shepard was actually surprised to find something tame on the screen. It was an image of her and Garrus from last night, when they’d been standing in the kitchen slow-dancing, her on the chair still, foreheads pressed together and eyes closed, smiling softly as they stood.

“That’s...oh.”

“I’ll send you a copy. You should see some of the other stuff I got of the others.”

Shepard’s face wasn’t burning quite as much now, eyes still on the picture of her and her dancing boyfriend. They looked blissfully happy, almost-dancing in the middle of the kitchen. 

She pulled the blankets a little higher, up to cover her shoulders, and smiled a little at the memories of last night. Shore leave was definitely a good idea, and this picture was going on her desk on the Normandy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this picture is one of [many that kasumi got during the citadel dlc party](https://vakarian-shepard.tumblr.com/post/162465326579/a-slideshow-of-increasingly-more)


End file.
